Page 66 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

I couldn’t breathe. My nostrils flared as I tried to take in painful, rapid breaths.

Get up. Get up. Get up.

One of the Russian mafia raised his hand, flicking it towards someone on the floor below. Santino stumbled away from Maddox and grabbed the cage fencing, bending at the waist. Nolan ran forward and pressed his fingers to Maddox’s neck, checking for a pulse.

Nolan’s eyes lifted to Sean. Sean’s jaw tightened as he twisted the sapphire ring on his finger. With a single shake of his head, Nolan declared Santino the winner.

My body seemed to process what it meant faster than my brain. If it weren’t for Oscar’s punishing grip holding me up, I’d have fallen to my knees. I kept staring at Maddox, willing him to blink. Or move. Or say something. Instead, a puddle of thick, scarlet blood had spread beneath his head.

No.

He spared my brother’s life. He showed mercy. He had to get up.

I looked at Sean, some desperate part of me willing him to do something, to save him somehow. But he just stared at Maddox with an icy glare, his chest heaving with anger and pure disappointment on his face.

“You’ve lost, McKenna,” Santino shouted from the ground, staring up at me with the arm that wasn’t broken raised. “Let her go. Now.”

Sean inhaled deeply, his stormy eyes flicking from the Bratva to Maddox, then to me. He’d lost this battle, but he wouldn’t lose the war. I could see it in his eyes. He nodded to Oscar to let me go, knowing he had no other choice at that moment.

“Soraya,” Sani called from below, stumbling towards the staircase. “Come here.”

Oscar grabbed my bound wrists and unlocked the handcuffs. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t walk away from this and let that evil man live. Before anyone could predict it, I reached into Oscar’s suit jacket, pulled out the knife, and shoved his chest hard. He fell back onto the bench, and I lunged for Sean.

His eyes widened as I plunged the blade into his chest. He fell back onto the steel balcony floor, and I went down with him, straddling his waist. I ripped the knife out and stabbed him again with a roar before a soldier wrestled me off him and slapped me across the face.

I hit my head on the corner of the bench and pain exploded through my temple. Carnage ensued. Buccini soldiers stormed the Irish gantry. The sound of fists breaking bones rang through the air. Sean was being dragged away and shielded by his men. I tried to crawl through the fighting to reach him, to make sure he didn’t survive, but a pair of muscular arms wrapped around me and lifted me effortlessly off the floor.

“No!” I shouted, struggling against their grip as they shoved their way through the bodies towards the staircase.

“It’s okay. We’ve got you.” My brother-in-law, the Mafia King of Italy, Alessio, spoke in a hushed, comforting voice as he shielded me from the violence he was fighting his way through. There was no point in trying to break his hold on me; he was too strong and would never let me go until I was safe.

My eyes darted around the warehouse, taking in the chaos I’d caused. Warm blood trickled down the side of my face where I’d hit my head, but I couldn’t feel that pain. The pain in my chest was more excruciating than any injury.

The Russians stood stoically on their gantry, watching and smoking their cigars. Slowly, one by one, they left their balcony, not giving a flying fuck about the battle around them. They wouldn’t get involved. This wasn’t their fight. This was merely entertainment.

When Alessio reached the ground floor, he headed towards the exit, while Giovanni and Arianna were helping Santino hobble behind us. I caught a glimpse of Maddox’s body through the mayhem. Still on the floor. Unmoving. Alone.

A guttural scream ripped from the shattered pieces of my heart as I reached out my arms for him. Alessio’s grip tightened as he pulled me further and further away.

“It’s okay, Raya. He’s coming. Sani’s coming.”

Of course, he thought this pain, this heartbreak, was out of concern for my brother, not for the man who’d almost killed him. How could they possibly know that my heart would never beat for anyone else again? How could they understand that while I was kept captive, a monster had become the love of my life?

That he’d chosen me over the revenge he deserved.

I clawed at Alessio’s shoulders, screaming and reaching for Maddox until my muscles burned. The warehouse doors flew open, taking us into the night and towards the cars.

“No! I can’t leave him!” The words shredded my throat raw. My blurred vision remained fixed on his lifeless body through the fighting. Then the doors closed. The unbearable knowledge that this was the last time I’d ever see him made me collapse against Alessio, sobbing uncontrollably into his chest as he tried to comfort me.

Someone opened a car door, and Alessio climbed in with me under his arm, holding my head to his chest and rocking me like a child.

I only realised Santino had joined us when he grabbed me from Alessio and hugged me tight. I didn’t even have the energy to push him away. I was so furious with him, but I didn’t have the right to be. He was only doing what he had to do to win the fight and protect me and Aria.

“You’re safe. It’s over now, Raya. We’ve got you. We’re taking you home.”

I cried harder. How could I tell him that my home was no longer the comforts of our childhood mansion in Verona, but the man he’d just killed?

“You’re going to be okay,” Sani whispered into the top of my head as the car started moving. “We’ve got you back. Everything’s going to be okay.”