He Left His Pregnant Bride at the Altar novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Curb
In the rain Ruggero blocks her limo, and Marisa hands him back his ring in front of both families until her water breaks.
The limousine had gone four blocks when two black SUVs cut across the intersection and stopped nose to nose in front of it.
The driver braked so hard my veil slid off my shoulder.
Rain hammered the roof.
Ruggero got out of the lead SUV before it had finished rocking.
He wore his dark glasses even in the downpour, the way he did when he didn't want anyone to read his eyes.
His jacket was gone, and the white shirt was soaked to his skin.
He walked straight to my door and pulled it open.
"Out," he said.
"I'm leaving."
"You are not leaving."
"Close the door, Ruggero. The seat is getting wet."
He didn't close it.
He took off his glasses, and under them his eyes were red and furious.
"Whatever you're angry about, we do it at home. Not in the street, not in front of my men."
"Your men were in the church too."
"Marisa."
I climbed out slowly, with the driver's hand under my elbow.
The rain hit my face and ran down inside the lace.
Behind Ruggero, car doors were opening.
His mother stepped out of the second SUV with an umbrella, and she did not open it for me.
My father came out of the third car with two of his men.
Tiberio was last, and he stayed against the fender with his hands in his pockets.
Nerina wasn't with them.
I looked at the circle of dark suits around me.
"You told me twenty minutes," I said.
"It turned into an hour and ten."
"The photo was a minor collision. Your man said so himself."
"She was having an attack. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking."
"I'm a doctor, Ruggero. I know what a panic attack looks like. I held her wrist an hour ago, and I'd have held it again if you had called me."
His jaw tightened.
"I didn't want you at a crash scene. You're eight months pregnant."
"I'm thirty-five weeks. I've done eleven hundred surgeries."
"Mari."
"You have said my name four times and every time it means wait."
My father stepped forward.
"That's enough. You embarrassed both families in front of three hundred people."
"The groom embarrassed himself."
"You will get back in the car, and you will tell that church you were frightened."
"No."
He went still.
I had never said that word to him, not once in twenty-eight years.
"Then hear me," my father said.
"If you leave this family, you leave all of it. The apartment, the cards, the hospital wing with your name on it."
"I know."
"The house on Bay Ridge Avenue, in my name, that you paid for."
"Keep it."
"You'll have nothing."
"I'll have a job," I said.
"I signed it forty minutes ago. Chief of trauma, Lakeshore General, Chicago. Ten years."
Nobody spoke.
Rain ran off Ruggero's chin.
"You're not going to Chicago," he said.
"I start after the baby."
"The baby is a Salerno."
"The baby is mine."
"She is mine," he said, and his voice cracked on the second word.
"You don't get to carry her out of this city. My daughter will not be raised by a stranger's hospital."
"She isn't a stranger's."
I pulled at the ring on my left hand.
My fingers had swollen, and it took a long moment.
His mother made a small sound.
I put the ring in his palm, and I closed his fingers around it with both of mine.
His hand was hot and shaking.
"I waited ten years for you to pick me once," I said.
"Today you picked her, and I was standing there in my wedding dress."
"I'll fix it. Give me one night."
"You've had ten years."
He grabbed my wrist.
He didn't squeeze, but he didn't let go.
"Mari. Please. I'll do anything."
"Then let go of my arm."
He did.
For one second he looked younger than he had on the first night I ever met him, sitting at my father's table with blood on his cuff and asking for a needle.
I turned toward the limousine.
And a cramp tore low across my belly, hard enough to bend me in half.
I put my hand on the roof of the car.
It passed.
I breathed out, and then something warm ran down both my legs, and it wasn't rain.
I looked down at the wet hem of my dress.
I knew exactly what it meant.
"Ruggero," I said.
He was already looking at the water on the pavement.
"She's early," I said.
He caught me before my knees went.
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