Mafia love

“Raphael, I’m so sorry. I don’t love you. I don’t love you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you or appreciate all you’ve done for me.

You’ve given me everything. A beautiful life I would never have had if not for you. Our precious daughter… but… I just… I lost that co

“Do you love Tag?” Again, another foolish question. I never asked a question I didn’t already know the answer to, and I’d just landed myself in the shit of that one.

She blinked several times, and her lips parted. “You don’t need to know that.”

“Because it’s true. You love him.” In rage, I grabbed the glass weight on my desk and threw it against the wall. It smashed, and she shrieked.

“You can’t kill him. Please call off whatever plans you have.” Her bright eyes pleaded with me. “Please.

I could give her a divorce, but I wouldn’t give her a divorce and see her with Tag. Tonight, Tag would either end up in prison for a very long time, or dead.

I answered her with a smile and stepped back.

“Raphael, please,” she begged.

“No, noooooooo.” No a million times. That asshole would get his if it was the last thing I did. “No!” I cried out and my voice was so primal and feral I didn’t recognize it.

Her eyes went wide with fright. “Bastard, you’d kill him?”

“Not like I haven’t killed before.”

“I hate you. I hate you.” She turned around and ran through the door.

I didn’t care.

As far as I was concerned, I’d lost her. I wished to God I could say that I hated her too, but I was cursed with loving her. Loving a woman I’d been with for nearly twenty years. We had our beautiful Amelia, and I’d thought we were the family I always wanted.

I’d been so wrong.

Tag would pay for this. I would make him pay one way or another.

Present day…

I took the whole five minutes I asked for. One minute to pack my guns in my pockets and four minutes to reflect.

To reflect on the day when everything went to hell. It was the kind of situation that tore a person apart.

I’d wanted revenge. I’d wanted some form of justice to what had been done to me, and I surely got mine. Revenge was an evil thing that could go all sorts of ways.

You could take things into your hands and deal out justice, but it would come at a price.

It always did, and that price was something that could expand to an abysmal black hole and get bigger and bigger. Harder to contain. Harder to manage.

That’s what happened to me.

I’d caught Eloise cheating, I’d changed up the plans to get the diamonds and got them well before Tag and his boys could get there, then I’d sent them on a wild goose chase to get them all caught.

I’d thought prison would have been the result. The shipment contained priceless art and artifacts. It would have been clear as day that they were in the act of stealing the shipment.

But Eloise didn’t just leave the house that day. She went to the docks in an attempt to save Tag.

Tag retaliated to Agent Peterson and his men indeed, and she got caught in the crossfire. Not just her. Tag’s boys too.

In one flash he lost it all.

His family, and her.

I lost her.

My plan to exact revenge had ruined everything and set off the chain of events that followed me right to this point where these crazy people had taken my daughter. The last precious thing I had left in this world.

The phone ringing on my desk cut into my thoughts. My five minutes were probably up, and normally, I wouldn’t have answered it, but I did now because of the situation.

“Hello, old friend.” It was Tag. How convenient.

“Why are you calling me?”

I wasn’t going to waste time talking shit.

“Just checking in. I got word your boys made it out of the facility. I’m impressed.”

“Really?” This was me bullshitting him. Truthfully, I knew from the way Luc had explained what went down that neither he nor Claudius would have made it out alive without Maurice and Amelia’s friends.

“Yes, really. Shows they have some balls. Two guys against a pack.

Next time, they won’t be so lucky.”

Something sparked in me. It was his comment. Two guys against a pack.

Meaning he didn’t know about the cops and Maurice.

“Oh yeah. When is next time?” More testing. I wanted to see if we could really harness the element of surprise.

“I’m about to tell you. We meet at eight. Bring the diamonds.”

We’d be there a lot sooner than fucking eight.

“Where?” I asked pointedly.

“Clever, clever. I’ll tell you closer to the time. Sit tight till then.”

Good, we had the element of something. A window of some opportunity. We could be at Peyton in three hours. That would take us to

around four. If we went through the old section of the prison like Cora suggested, we could get into the facility and catch them by surprise.

As to what would happen after that, I didn’t know. I didn’t know how I’d fare, but that didn’t matter.

The two women I loved more than life itself had told me they hated me.

Before Amelia got taken, she’d given me that look of hate again, and it crushed me. I didn’t know how she felt or what they were doing to her. It was all my fault.

There was one thing I needed to know though. One thing I had to know, and this was the perfect opportunity.

“You haven’t said yet. How did you figure it out?” I asked.

“Millicent.”

Great, confirmation of what I’d feared.

“Right.”

“But you knew that and didn’t want to believe it, just like how you didn’t want to believe that your marriage was over.” He gave me a sinister laugh.

A knife straight to my heart. I’d bet he loved that my wife chose him over me.

The days that followed after I’d caught them together were awful. I’d imagined all sorts of things. What they must have talked about, what they must have done. All that they did.

There was a day in between when Eloise had said she was going shopping and was away for much longer than her usual time. When she got home that night, I saw the few things she’d bought and immediately suspected that she’d been with Tag. I’d kept quiet right up to the big day when shit went down.

“You’re right, and I was a fool. A fool to believe that things like loyalty and trust meant anything. A fool to trust a wife I’d always been faithful to and believed she was faithful to me too. A fool to trust a friend or take a man like you for a friend when you would easily turn around and take the thing I loved the most. I was a fool to believe Millicent couldn’t be turned against me. Yes, Tag. I know I did so much wrong, so much wrong in this whole thing, and the things that I’m sorry for are that you lost your boys and Eloise died. But, fuck, I still want you dead. I still have the same vendetta against you. So, I’m not sorry for setting you up. I’m not sorry for your pain. I’m not sorry for anything I did to you. I’m sorry for the results.”

It was the end for me. It was the end of my road, the end of my journey, and it wouldn’t matter what happened to me. I’d say whatever the hell I liked. Right now, I could because I still had something he wanted.

The diamonds.