The Mafia Princess’s New Groom Chapter 09
“He already swapped out the ammunition in the armory.”
Sophia’s voice was barely a whisper now, each word costing her more than the last.
Blood frothed at the corners of her mouth.
But her eyes burned with the desperate fire of a woman who had nothing left to lose.
“He’s been selling guns and ammo overseas for months. Shipping them out through the south docks. And he also—”
A wet, sickening sound cut her off.
Vincent moved faster than anyone in that room expected a man with a severed ankle tendon to move.
The blade punched through Sophia’s chest and sank to the hilt.
His hand stayed locked around the handle, knuckles bone-white, arm shaking.
The hall went silent.
Not quiet.
Silent.
The kind of silence that comes after a bomb goes off and the world hasn’t figured out how to start again.
Vincent’s face was the color of old wax.
His breath came in harsh, ragged pulls, each one rattling through his chest like something broken was loose inside him.
“Didn’t I warn you?” His voice was low. Barely human. “Keep your mouth shut. Do what I tell you. That was all you ever had to do, Sophia. That was the only rule.”
He stared down at the woman impaled on his knife.
His hand was still gripping the handle.
“I told you I could love you. I told you I’d take care of you and the baby. But you don’t get to talk. Not one word more than I allow.” His voice cracked on the last word. “Did you really have to make me do this?”
Then Vincent Mancini, the man who’d spent the last year strutting around the waterfront like he owned the world, the man who hadn’t flinched when I put a bullet in his thigh — broke down and cried.
Not the calculated tears he’d shown me earlier.
These were real. Ugly.
The kind that twist a man’s face into something unrecognizable.
His shoulders heaved.
His jaw trembled.
Snot and blood smeared across his face and he didn’t bother wiping any of it away.
Maybe killing the woman he loved with his own hands was a kind of pain he simply didn’t know how to carry.
Or maybe it wasn’t love at all. Maybe it was the look on her face when the blade went in—the way her eyes went wide, not with surprise, but with understanding.
The kind of look that says, ‘I always knew it would end this way. I just hoped I was wrong.’
That look would haunt him.
I knew it would.
Because I’d seen that same look in my own mirror, the night I found out about the two of them.
The moment you realize the person you trusted most in the world has been sharpening a knife behind your back the whole time.
Sophia’s eyes were still open. Still locked on him. The shock was fading, replaced by something colder. Clearer.
“You bastard.” The word bubbled out of her on a tide of red. “You knew… you could never beat her. You knew from the start.” She coughed. Blood sprayed across the marble. “So why did you drag me into this? Why did you let me believe—”
Her voice gave out. She swallowed hard, grimaced, and found one last breath.
Her gaze drifted to me.
“Miss… Mancini.” Each syllable cost her something she wouldn’t get back. “I was wrong. I’m sorry. If I could… do it all over…”