Page 77 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

“No. I dropped the file.”

“We have it.”

I paused. My heart thundered.

“It’s how we knew you had been taken by McKenna. At first, we thought you might have done something as crazy as reaching out to the Russians or trying to go to them yourself to offer the marriage alliance to save Aria. But the file convinced us otherwise.”

I frowned, my eyebrows tightening as a sickening feeling rose in me. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

“I think it’s best I show you. Wait here.” Gio stood up and headed to his office. Sani continued berating me for my taste in men while he was gone.

“The shifter demons with forked tongues I can handle because they’re fictional. But the first man you show interest in is already in prison, is Irish, and stands you up on a first date? Cristo, Raya.”

I ignored him, my mind too preoccupied with what I was about to read about M.

Gio waltzed back in and set the file on the table in front of me. I stared at it. Did I even want to know? I could see M for what he was now. An infatuation. A fairytale. A dream I so desperately wanted to believe in. It wasn’t real. What Maddox and I had was real. This didn’t even matter to me anymore.

I opened it and scanned the first page. It was his mug shot. In his thirties, with an untidy beard and brown eyes. Attractive, but not Maddox. I felt no pull or desire at all. It was strange to see his face and know I’d been writing to that man for over a year.

Malachi O’Halligan. Born and raised in Dublin. Thirty-seven when released. Released early from prison for good behaviour after an appeal. He’d been serving five years for… My throat closed. I glanced up at Gio. His jaw tightened, knowing what I’d just seen.

He was convicted of kidnapping and attempted trafficking for sexual exploitation.

That’s not what he told me he was in for. A far cry from petty theft or drug-dealing.

He was given a twenty-year sentence.

“He was reported by a woman who escaped him as he tried to smuggle her out of the UK,” Gio said. My hands shook. “But who gets out after only five years for a crime that severe?”

I swallowed.

“Someone powerful helped make his appeal successful. Someone with connections to political corruption within the system,” Sani answered, voicing what I was already thinking. “Sean McKenna.”

“You’re lucky he never turned up for that meeting, Raya. God knows what his intentions were.”

Sani was right. He could have been using the pen-pal programme to plan his next victim. A man who could sell women had no respect for them. He’d played me completely. And he thought I was Sophia. Her life would have been in danger because of me.

But that sparked a new question. Why didn’t he meet me? Had he clocked all the bodyguards and realised I was too risky? Or had something stopped him from coming? I shook my head and turned the page. I froze at the images.

“The last thing Nero could find on him was this. A few days out of prison, he was already stalking another girl in Dublin,” Gio explained, showing grainy CCTV images of Malachi in the passenger seat of an SUV, watching a pretty brunette serving tables outside a pub. Then another image of him in the same car, following the girl as she drove down the road. But that’s not what had my heart racing.

It was the man in the driver’s seat.

“I know that man,” I muttered under my breath.

“We ran a background check on the driver after we found the file. He’s one of Sean’s highest-ranking soldiers.”

“His name’s Nolan,” I said, fury making my voice shake. Of all the soldiers I’d encountered in Ireland, I’d never have thought Nolan capable of this. He seemed the only half-decent one among them.

“Yes. We’ve tried to find more about him, Malachi and the girl, but there’s nothing. A few leads on Nolan led us to realise he worked for Sean, so that’s how we knew there was a connection.”

“What about the girl?” She was clearly in danger, about to be ripped off the street and sold into underground sex-trafficking rings. We had to help her.

Gio shook his head. “Her name’s Lauren Mildren. She was living in Dublin, working as a barmaid at a local pub. Her mother reported her missing not long after these pictures were taken. We stopped looking into her after that. Our priority was finding you. We were worried this had happened to you.”

I buried my head in my hands. Poor girl. Fuck Nolan. Fuck Malachi. And fuck Sean McKenna.

My head snapped up. “Is he dead?” I asked with bitterness. “Sean. Did I kill him?”