Page 76 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

When my coffee was ready, I approached the table and sat down. I avoided their gaze and stared at my drink, lifting it to my lips. I hadn’t felt like eating much over the past week and had been surviving on coffee and the chocolate Liliana always left in my room.

My family was not known for timidity or subtlety. So the longer the silence stretched, the more uncomfortable everyone became. They had no idea what to say to me, how to start this conversation. I guessed the best place to start was with an apology.

“I’m sorry.”

Their faces morphed into confusion. They all glanced at each other.

Olivia reached for my hand, resting hers over mine. “Raya, sweetie. You don’t need to be sorry for any of this. This wasn’t your fault.”

“But it was.”

They all frowned. “What do you mean?” Sani asked.

I lifted my hand to my face and rubbed my forehead. “If I’d never left the house that night to meet Nero, I never would have put you all through hell over the past six weeks.” I didn’t think they noticed I didn’t show regret for myself. How could I regret it when it led me to Maddox?

“We realised you’d left on your own,” Gio said carefully. “When we watched the CCTV footage and saw a maid walking out of the back gate, we questioned the soldiers on duty, and they said it was Sophia. But she’d already clocked out and gone home. We knew it had to be you. We weren’t angry. I mean, I was, but I’ve calmed down. We just don’t understand why you did it. Aria said you’d wanted Nero to find someone.”

My eyes locked with Aria’s. She gave me an apologetic look, but she didn’t need to. Of course, she’d tell them about it when I went missing, and Nero was found dead. The guilt over his death still weighed heavily on me.

“It was stupid. And reckless. And… I just…” I covered my face to hide my shame. “Honestly, I was lonely. I was desperate for connection. For someone to…”

Want me. Love me. Choose me.

“Oh, Raya.” Olivia’s pity was meant well, but it made my stomach twist. “We are the ones who should be apologising. We knew you were struggling, and we should have done more.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t like that. I–I was writing to an Irish inmate in a Dublin prison for a year.”

Silence. I peered around at their confused faces.

“I’m sorry, you were doing what?” Gio said, his tone sharp. Liv placed a hand over his arm.

“Why?” Sani asked, his eyebrows furrowing. “How the fuck?”

“Someone I know was enrolled in a pen-pal programme, and she didn’t want to do it, so I offered to write for her instead. I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t tell them anything about our family or my real name. I just… I needed a connection with someone outside this family.”

“And an Irish criminal was at the top of the list?” Sani folded his arms across his chest, a look of disbelief on his face.

“You can’t always be the unhinged idiot in this family,” I snapped. “You have to let some of us have a turn.”

Normally, that would have been banter between us, but there was an edge to my tone that made it… not. I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t sure I’d ever know how to forgive him for what he’d done.

No one laughed as they usually would, which only made the atmosphere more tense. That was what I was afraid of. If they were reacting badly to this, imagine how they’d react to me telling them I gave my virginity to the tattooed killer who nearly bashed my brother’s brains into cement… oh, and I fell in love with him.

“So you were writing to an inmate in Dublin for a year under a false identity,” Olivia continued. “How does that connect to all of this?”

“The file,” Gio said, sitting back and rubbing his chin, stressed. My eyes widened. They found the file on M? “That’s who you wanted Nero to find? The inmate.”

I nodded. “A few months earlier, he was due to be released. We’d arranged to meet in Verona. I went, but he never turned up.”

“You planned to meet him alone? Are you insane?” Sani shouted.

“No more than you.”

“Sani, calm down. Let her talk,” Aria scolded him. He huffed, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been.

“I had men with me. Ivano was there. They didn’t know I was meeting someone. Anyway, he never showed up. And I was really… hurt. The letters stopped. I had no idea how to contact him, so I asked Nero for help. At first, he said no, but then he changed his mind. I snuck out of the house to meet him because he had information. That’s when the Irish ambushed us.”

“Did you read the file before you were taken?” Gio asked. The way he spoke made my spine straighten.