MQTT messages not being received - I can publish just fine

I have a Mega + ESP8266 (Huzzah flashed with AT command set) set up and communicating with a Mosquitto MQTT broker running on a server within my network. My wifi communications seem to work just fine and I can publish to MQTT to the network server (across wifi) without issue.

However, I am not receiving anything on the Mega. The topic I am subscribed to works from a broker perspective (I've got a service monitoring the MQTT traffic and have verified messages). I'm using the following code (mostly snipets found in examples). I assume if I see anything in the incoming buffer I would print the 'Payload' message at the end of the callback function but I never get to this line. I've seen some similar topics on the forum but not one that has a solution.

#include <WiFiEspClient.h>
#include <WiFiEsp.h>
#include <WiFiEspUdp.h>
#include <PubSubClient.h>

#define WIFI_AP "mywifi"
#define WIFI_PASSWORD "mypassword"

#define TOKEN "DEMO_TOKEN"
char MQTT_SERVER[] = "10.0.0.28"; // MQTT server inside network

// Initialize the Ethernet client object
WiFiEspClient espClient;

PubSubClient client(espClient);
HardwareSerial & soft = Serial1; //   Use hardware serial for MEGA

int status = WL_IDLE_STATUS;
unsigned long lastSend;
char message_buff[100];
float send_data = 68.0;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  InitWiFi();
  client.setServer( MQTT_SERVER, 1883 );
  client.setCallback(callback);
  lastSend = 0;
}

void loop() {
  status = WiFi.status();
  // attempt to connect to network if not connected
  if ( status != WL_CONNECTED) {
    Serial.println("In !WL_CONNECTED process");
    while ( status != WL_CONNECTED) {
      Serial.print("Attempting to connect to WPA SSID: ");
      Serial.println(WIFI_AP);
      // Connect to WPA/WPA2 network
      status = WiFi.begin(WIFI_AP, WIFI_PASSWORD);
      delay(500);
    }
    Serial.println("Connected to AP");
  }

  // attempt to connect to MQTT SERVER if not connected
  if ( !client.connected() ) {
    Serial.println((millis()-lastSend)/1000); // print time since last reconnect
    reconnect();
    lastSend = millis();
  }

  if ( millis() - lastSend > 5000 ) { // send every xx seconds
    sendData();
    lastSend = millis();
   }

  // maintain connection to MQTT SERVER and process incoming messages
  client.loop();
  delay(100);
}

void sendData()
{
  send_data += 0.1;
  String payload = String(send_data);

  // Send payload
  char attributes[100];
  payload.toCharArray( attributes, 100 );
  client.publish( "bedroom/temperature", attributes );
}

// handles message arrived on subscribed topic(s)
void callback(char* topic, byte* payload, unsigned int length) {

  int i = 0;

  //Serial.println("Message arrived:  topic: " + String(topic));
  //Serial.println("Length: " + String(length,DEC));
  
  // create character buffer with ending null terminator (string)
  for(i=0; i<length; i++) {
    message_buff[i] = payload[i];
  }
  message_buff[i] = '\0';
  String msgString = String(message_buff);
  Serial.println("Payload: " + msgString);
}

void InitWiFi()
{
  // initialize serial for ESP module
  soft.begin(9600);
  // initialize ESP module
  WiFi.init(&soft);
  // check for the presence of the shield
  if (WiFi.status() == WL_NO_SHIELD) {
    Serial.println("WiFi shield not present");
    // don't continue
    while (true);
  }

  Serial.println("Connecting to AP ...");
  // attempt to connect to WiFi network
  while ( status != WL_CONNECTED) {
    Serial.print("Attempting to connect to WPA SSID: ");
    Serial.println(WIFI_AP);
    // Connect to WPA/WPA2 network
    status = WiFi.begin(WIFI_AP, WIFI_PASSWORD);
    delay(500);
  }
  Serial.println("Connected to AP");
}

void reconnect() {
// Loop until we're reconnected to MQTT Server
  while (!client.connected()) {
    Serial.print("Connecting to MQTT Server ...");
    // Attempt to connect (clientId, username, password)
    if ( client.connect("Arduino Device", TOKEN, NULL) ) {
      Serial.println( "[DONE]" );
      //client.subscribe( "bedroom/temperature" );
      client.subscribe( "arduinoTest" );
    } else {
      Serial.print( "[FAILED] [ rc = " );
      Serial.print( client.state() );
      Serial.println( " : retrying in 5 seconds]" );
      // Wait 5 seconds before retrying
      delay( 5000 );
    }
  }
}