Page 72 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

He could be next.

Survival is the only key.

She doesn’t see the monster break free from the boy.

The tears give way to anger.

Anger welcomes violence.

And violence hands him the illusion of freedom.

But then he sees her, huddled in his dark.

She doesn’t care that he’s a monster,

Who’ll steal her from under the night’s sky.

She looks at him across the room with hazel eyes,

A soft smile, and she lets him drag her

Down to the hell he lives in.

He tries to fight it, tries to push her away.

Boundaries crossed, and still she stays.

The mask slips, day by day,

He’s afraid of what she’ll see.

Survival is the only key.

She doesn’t know what she undoes in him.

The locks, the dark, the years of loneliness.

She doesn’t know that she’s the first warm thing to find him there,

And not to see him as a monster.

She says if he is, she’s one too.

She doesn’t know that she is the only key.

But one day, she will.”

I folded the poem and pressed it to my lips as a small sob escaped me.

“Bellissima, tesoro,” Mamma said, startling me. I turned towards her to find her watching me with clear, sharp eyes. It had been so long since I’d seen that look. Not the vacant, mildly confused stare I’d grown accustomed to over the past two years. A lump instantly formed in my throat. “What’s wrong, Soraya?”

“Mamma.” I leaned into her and hugged her tightly, my heart soaring that she was having a lucid moment when I needed her most. “I missed you.”

“I’ve been away again, haven’t I?” she whispered, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.

“We both have.”

“I missed you, too,” she said, stroking my hair. My chest tightened. “Who is the poet? Do I know them?”