I Got Pregnant by My Boss, the Mob Heir, So He Put a Ring on It novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Terms
In the yard office Gio and Raisa set the rules of the fake engagement; he kisses her to prove a point and drives her to his father's mansion, where Salvatore stops cold at her middle name.
The yard office smelled of coffee that had been on the burner since Tuesday.
Gio shut the door behind us and the four men went away from the window without being told.
An ambulance had come and gone, quietly, with no siren.
Lorenzo had gone in it, still smiling at me through the back doors.
Nobody had said the word police, and nobody was going to.
I stood in the middle of the room with my coat still on and the ring still in my fist.
"Sit," Gio said.
"No."
"You're pregnant."
"I'm pregnant, not dying.
"Say what you've got to say."
He took off his watch cap and dropped it on the desk.
His hair was black and flattened from the cap, and there was a pale scar through his left eyebrow I had noticed three years ago and never mentioned.
He leaned against the desk with his arms folded and looked at me for a long time.
"You saw him in that trunk," he said.
"I saw a man who needed a hospital."
"You saw more than that, and so did four of mine.
"By morning the whole yard knows you pulled that car, and by noon the whole family knows."
"I won't say anything."
"It doesn't matter what you say.
"What matters is whose you are when they come asking."
I stared at him.
"I'm not anyone's," I said.
"You are now," he said.
"As of ten minutes ago, you're mine, and so is what you're carrying.
"Anybody who wants to ask you a question about tonight has to ask me first."
I looked down at my fist.
"That's what the ring is."
"That's what the ring is," he said.
"A shield," I said.
"For you, and for the baby.
"Until it's born."
I laughed, short and ugly.
"And after it's born?"
"After it's born you keep the child and you keep the money and you walk.
"I'll put it in writing."
"What money?" I said.
"Whatever number you say," he said.
I turned the ring over in my fingers.
It was warm from my hand and heavier than it looked.
"I have terms of my own," I said.
"Say them," Gio said.
"I live in my own apartment."
"No," he said.
"I keep my own money and I take none of yours," I said.
"You'll take what the family provides for my wife."
"I'm not your wife."
"Not yet," he said.
"Not ever, if you like.
"But for the dock, and for my father, you are."
I took a step toward him.
"I don't sleep in your house," I said.
"You will," he said.
"Lorenzo knows where you live.
"Half of his men have driven past your door on a call.
"The only place in this city that's safe for you is the house on Skyline."
He said it flatly, like a fact about the weather.
I hated that it was a fact.
"Nobody falls in love," I said.
Something moved in his jaw.
"Nobody falls in love," he agreed.
"I want that said out loud."
"Nobody falls in love.
"It's a shield, it's a business deal, and in eight months you walk away with a child and a check."
"And what do you get?"
"I get to keep my cousin from using my child," he said.
"That's all I want," he added.
I believed him.
That was the trouble.
I had spent six weeks telling myself that the man I'd stood in the dark with in September was not the man I worked for.
He was the same one.
He was standing three feet from me with his sleeves pushed back, smelling of cold and smoke, and I could still feel the exact place where his hand had gripped my hip on the shop floor.
I did not step back.
"Then we're agreed," I said.
"One more thing," he said.
"What?" I said.
"You called me Mr. Brandisi on the dock."
"It's your name," I said.
"Don't do it again."
He came off the desk.
He didn't touch me, only stood close enough that I had to tip my head back.
His eyes were dark, nearly black in the fluorescent light.
"You think I don't remember what you said to me," he said, very low.
"On the shop floor.
"The sounds you made.
"You think I haven't thought about it every night for six weeks."
My mouth went dry.
"That was a mistake," I said.
"Was it?"
"It was a one-time thing."
"Then call my bluff," he said.
"Walk out."
I did not walk out.
I stood there, breathing hard, and he lifted one hand and took hold of my braid at the base of my skull.
He did it slowly, so I could stop him.
I did not stop him.
He tilted my head and put his mouth against the side of my neck, just under the ear.
I felt the scrape of his stubble and the heat of his breath, and my knees nearly went.
"Say it's nothing," he murmured against my skin.
"I'll let you go."
"It's nothing," I said.
"Liar," he said.
He kissed my throat.
I grabbed his coat in both fists, ring and all, and hauled his mouth up to mine.
He tasted like cold air and coffee, and the sound he made when I bit his lower lip went through me like a current.
His hand slid under my open coat and flattened on my back, pulling me against him.
I felt him hard against my stomach, through the wool and the canvas.
"Mine," he said, rough, into my mouth.
"Don't say that."
"Mine," he said again.
"Say it back."
"No."
He laughed, low, and kissed me harder.
I had my hands inside his overcoat and I could feel his heartbeat slamming against his ribs.
It was exactly the same as September, and I wanted to cry.
It was exactly the same, and it was nothing like it, because this time I knew what it would cost.
I pushed him off.
I did it with both hands flat on his chest, and he let me.
We stood there panting two feet apart.
"That's not in the terms," I said.
"No."
"I'm not sleeping with you because you gave me a ring."
"I didn't ask you to," Gio said.
His voice shook a little.
"I'll drive you to the house."
"My truck."
"Is the yard's.
"I'll send someone for your things."
I let him lead me out into the cold.
He opened the Charger's passenger door for me and I got in.
The heater was already running, and the seat was warm.
He drove up the hill with both hands on the wheel, through streets glittering with the first frost.
The city fell away below us, black harbor and orange lights, and the lake went out and out into nothing.
Skyline Parkway ran along the ridge above it all.
The Brandisi house stood at the top of a long drive, gray stone with a slate roof and every window lit.
It looked like a bank.
"He's awake," Gio said, killing the engine.
"He's always awake."
"Who?" I asked.
"My father," Gio said.
The front door opened before we reached it.
An old man stood in the light at the top of the steps in a gray cardigan, white hair swept back from a broad face.
He was big, even at seventy, and he held himself like a man who had never in his life waited for anything.
His eyes went to the ring in my fist.
They went to Gio, and back to me.
"Papa," Gio said.
"This is Raisa Kaarlela.
"We're engaged."
Salvatore Brandisi came down two steps and took my free hand in both of his, warm and dry, with a gold signet ring on the left one.
"Kaarlela," he said.
"A Finnish name.
"The mother's side or the father's?"
"My adoptive father's," I said.
"I never knew the other."
"Adoptive."
"I'm sorry, I don't know your middle name," he said.
"For the papers."
"Aune-Marja."
I said it the way I'd said it on every form since I was five.
The old man's hands tightened on mine.
For a moment, the length of one breath, his face went entirely still.
It was the stillness of a man who has been struck from behind and has decided not to turn.
Then he smiled and let go.
"Marja," he said.
"A lovely name.
"Come in out of the cold, Raisa."
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