Page 105 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

Tears sprang to my eyes, and the concern on his face deepened. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and guided me towards a room that had been Sani’s and my playroom as children. I’d turned it into a cosy reading nook for all my books years ago.

“Go get Alessio and your mamma,” Gio ordered Lili. She nodded and hurried out of the room. With his hand on my back, Gio helped me sit on the small sofa and grabbed the throw from the back of it, wrapping it around my shoulders. “Cristo, you’re shaking, Raya. We should never have brought him here.”

“No, I—” The words stuck in my throat. Maddox was alive. And he was here. In Italy. In my family’s estate. It was all too much. Lili, Liv and Alessio came inside and shut the door. Lili and Liv sat on either side of me, immediately stroking my back and holding my trembling hands. Alessio stayed a little further back, leaning against the wall behind Giovanni to give me space.

“Raya, I know it might be difficult, but we need you to tell us what you know about Maddox. You can just nod or shake your head if talking is too much right now, but we need to check a few things. Okay?”

I swallowed, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

“Was he loyal to Sean? One of his men?”

I shook my head immediately. “N-no. He… he was his prisoner. Sean killed his family and kept him captive since he was twelve.”

“Was he the man you were kept in a bunker with?”

I stared at my hands clasped with Liv and Lili’s. Lili squeezed mine. I nodded. “Y-yes.”

Gio exhaled as if he needed the courage to ask the next question. “Did he ever hurt you?” I lifted my head and looked my brother in the eye. “Did he ever touch you? Did he ever do anything to you, even if it was under Sean’s orders?”

“No!” I blurted. “No. He—” I knew what they were thinking, but it wasn’t like that.

Yes, at the beginning, Maddox was dangerous and tried to kill me. But… that was before. That was when he was so deep in his darkness that he couldn’t find a way out. I was his way out. That he could never bring himself to do it was the moment everything changed for him. For us. But they would never understand that. They weren’t there. They’d hear the worst and assume the worst. They’d rip him to pieces for laying a hand on me. Or even for thinking of it.

They all stared at me, waiting. I shook my head. “He didn’t.”

Gio glanced at Liv. Alessio leaned against the wall, studying me. I’d never been a good liar.

“Raya,” Liv began, speaking in her soft mother-bear voice. “It’s okay. You don’t have to protect him. Being locked in a confined space with a violent man like that for a long time can cause a lot of confusing feelings, and seeing him again could bring them all back. But you don’t need to fear him now. He can’t hurt you—”

“No,” I snapped. “You don’t understand. Maddox kept me alive. He protected me! He saved my life from Sean’s men multiple times. He—he kept me safe.”

My agitation and anger only grew the longer it took them to digest that information. I could sense their doubt and concern. They thought this was some kind of Stockholm syndrome situation. Nothing I said would change that until they trusted Maddox themselves.

“Okay,” Gio breathed. “We’re not trying to upset you, Raya. It’s just… you’ve been through something very traumatic, and when you saw him last night, you were like a different person. I’ve never seen you like that. You were aggressive and angry, then you went into complete shock. You fainted.”

“Because I thought he was dead,” I said. “I watched him die!”

Gio nodded. “I understand. I’m sorry you saw him before I had a chance to prepare you. If you’re not comfortable with him being here, we can move him elsewhere. He came to us because he wants us to help him kill Sean. We just had to check he was telling the truth and this wasn’t a trap from Sean. We will move him to one of our other properties until—”

“No, no.” My eyes widened. “I want him here. I’m fine. I was just in shock. He should stay.”

Alessio stepped forward and rested his hands on the back of Giovanni’s sofa. I lifted my gaze to meet his light-blue eyes and swallowed at the seriousness in them.

“Last night I asked him whether anything had happened between the two of you. If there was anything we should know.”

My heart flipped. “W-what did he say?”

Alessio held my gaze. “He said he doesn’t remember you.”

The words landed softly, but they punctured my soul like bullets. I blinked, trying to make sense of it. He was lying to protect himself. He knew they’d likely kill him if they thought we’d been intimate or that he’d come anywhere near me. That had to be it. He didn’t want them to know about us, so he’d come up with this… but…

“Apparently, he doesn’t remember anything from the past two months, including the night of the fight with Santino. He says he has retrograde amnesia due to his head injury. It seems suspiciously timed and a perfect alibi to cover anything he’s trying to hide.”

I swallowed. That was one hell of a lie. Fuck, Maddox. Why would you say that?

“Raya? Did anything happen between the two of you? Do you have feelings for him?” Liv asked gently.

I sucked in a breath and considered how this conversation would go. If I admitted our relationship now, I’d also be admitting that Maddox had lied to them. They wouldn’t trust anything that came out of his mouth again. They’d think he had made up the memory loss just to hide us, which would piss them off. I needed to buy us some time. I needed to speak to Maddox and come up with a plan to tell them about us.