Page 163 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

“Monster.” A wet rasp bubbled from his lips. “I was startin’ to think you weren’t comin’.”

I said nothing.

“How the tables have turned, my boy. Look at you, sittin’ there. Free. Me hangin’ here, waitin’ to die. Does it feel like you always imagined it would?”

When I didn’t respond, he chuckled, which dissolved into a wheezy cough. “It doesn’t, does it? You want to know why? Because she made you soft.”

Silence.

His one functioning eye narrowed as he sneered. “She’s made you pathetic. And she’ll grow bored of you now, you watch. You’re not the excitin’ monster she wanted to tame any more. She’ll realise no amount of love can fix a creature like you. You’re just broken.”

I held his gaze, refusing to react to a single taunt. All he had left were his vicious words. He knew he would never leave this cell alive. Surviving was never the goal. It was to make me more broken than when I walked in. One last win. One last masterpiece of manipulation.

“How many failures can a man live with, Monster?” he asked, his hands twitching above his head, shackled. “Hmm. Your mam. Your da. Roisin. Connor. You’d even have failed Soraya if her fiancé hadn’t come to her rescue.”

My jaw clenched, but I refused to let his words sink beneath my skin.

“Does she blame you, do you think… or herself?” He smirked. “For Giovanni.” He tilted his head towards the other bicep. “You want to know why I shot him?”

Give. Him. Nothing.

“She might eventually forgive herself for fallin’ in love with you and for bringin’ me to her door. But you…” He shook his head. “You will never forgive yourself. Giovanni died because she let you into her life.”

My heart thundered against my ribs, and I hated it. That was the wound. He knew. Years of breaking my bones, starvation, or hours in my father’s grave never hurt me as much as the knowledge that I could have prevented someone’s death. That the weight of it landed on my shoulders, every damn time. If I’d never come to Italy, Soraya would still have her brother.

He watched me and waited for it to eat me alive.

I leaned back in the chair and folded my arms. No. Fuck his manipulation. He was wrong. Raya may have made me softer, but she made me stronger, too. Strong enough to sit here and recognise this for what it was. His bullshit.

When I didn’t react again, I saw the first flicker of confusion cross his mangled face. A tiny crack in his bravado.

His sneer dropped. “You’d be nothin’ without me,” he rasped. “Dead, along with the rest of your family. I built you to my own design. Everythin’ you are is because of what I made you. I’ve taught you everythin’. Every skill, every scar, every fucked-up thought in your head belongs to me. Remember that the next time she tells you she loves you.”

I pulled a knife from my boot and a needle and thread from my pocket, balancing each on my knee. He frowned, his eyes darting between them.

“Choose.”

The first word I said since entering the cell landed exactly as I wanted it to. With recognition. He wasn’t in control of the games anymore. I was.

He swallowed. “Stop being a pussy and kill—“

“Choose.”

He huffed through his broken nose. “Needle.”

I stood up. I walked the short distance to him and stared into his eyes.

“Do you know what your problem has always been, McKenna? Apart from bein’ a cowardly cunt?”

He smiled. “Tell me.”

“You never knew when to shut your fuckin’ mouth.”

I caught his lips, pinched them together, and drove the needle through the corner. His scream was muffled, his body thrashing against the chains as I began to sew his mouth shut agonisingly slow.

“You didn’t teach me everythin’,” I said, working the needle through his flesh slowly. “My mam taught me to cross-stitch, not you.”

When I’d finished, I stepped back and admired my work. He’d lost the only power he had left, sealed behind twelve neat stitches.