My Father Traded Me for the Don's Sister, So I Married the Don novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: The Ring

Luca's POV

Silvio stood at my gate at eleven at night with a ring in his hand.

For the first time in nineteen years I did not know what to say to him.

"Don," he said.

"Come in out of the cold."

"I'd rather stay out here," Silvio said.

"Why?"

"Because if I come in, Rosalba will ask me what I'm holding," he said.

"She already asked from the window."

"She asked the whole county." He looked down at his palm. "I took it out of the vault this afternoon, as you said. I have been carrying it for nine hours."

"And?"

"And I kept thinking I'd lose it." He held it out, stiffly, the way he handed over a sealed envelope. "I'd rather lose a finger."

I took it.

It was a plain gold band with a small old diamond set low, so that it would not catch on thread.

My mother had worn it thirty-four years, and when she was dying she put it in my palm.

"For the one who asks you things," she had said.

I had not understood her, then.

I closed my hand.

"Go to bed, Silvio."

"Yes, Don," he said.

"And thank you."

He bowed his head, and then, very quickly, he did something he had done only twice before.

He put his hand on my shoulder.

"She'll say yes," he said.

"You don't know that."

"I've watched her for five weeks." His mouth moved. "I'd bet my thermos."

I did not sleep.

I lay on my back beside my wife, with the box on the nightstand, and I listened to her breathe.

I had done something behind her back, and I had to decide how to say it.

Nine days before, on the night of the sit-down, she had fallen asleep with her hand on my chest and her pearls on the pillow.

At four that morning I had gone downstairs.

Silvio had been waiting in the study with a folder.

The Villa Calabria did not belong to Aurelio Costanzo.

It belonged to a company that belonged to a bank, and the bank held a note that Aurelio had been paying late for three years.

He had mortgaged her mother's hall to buy the horses and the suits and the table full of laughing.

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