My Mafia Husband Forced Me to Bleed for His Pregnant Mistress novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The White Line on the Bridge

Cosima crosses the line on the Harbor Street bridge into Stefano Ravello's territory and his men stop Ugo. Stefano offers to stand beside her before the Commission, and Rocco's convoy arrives at his gate with the doctor and an empty blood bag.

Ugo hit the back of the Lincoln at sixty miles an hour.

My head snapped forward and the steering wheel slammed my ribs.

The car swung across the road, hit the shoulder, and came back.

I kept my foot on the gas.

"Come on," I said to the old engine. "Come on, you stubborn thing."

Ugo came again.

This time the SUV pulled up alongside me, and his window slid down.

"Pull over, Mrs. Lucarelli," he shouted. "The Don only wants to talk!"

"Then he can talk to my lawyer!"

He turned the wheel and put his bumper against my door.

The Lincoln scraped the guardrail with a shriek and a spray of sparks.

Ahead of me the road ran down to the Harbor Street bridge.

I had driven over it a hundred times, and I had never once crossed the white line painted in the middle.

Everyone in my husband's world knew what the line meant.

The south end belonged to the Lucarelli family.

The north end belonged to Stefano Ravello.

Nobody crossed it without a funeral being planned.

I went across it at seventy.

Ugo cursed, and I heard his brakes.

Two black trucks sat nose to nose across both lanes on the far side, and I stood on my own brakes.

The Lincoln spun and stopped sideways with its front wheel hanging over the curb.

For a moment I couldn't hear anything but my own breathing.

Then a man opened my door.

He was tall, in a dark overcoat, with grey eyes and a thin white scar through his left eyebrow.

I knew his face from the newspapers, and from across a hundred rooms where he had never once spoken to me.

Stefano Ravello looked at my arm first.

Then he looked at the rest of me.

"Mrs. Lucarelli," he said. "You're on my side of the bridge."

"I know."

"Can you walk?"

"I'll walk if you'll tell your men not to shoot Ugo."

"Nobody is shooting anyone unless he crosses."

He held out his hand.

I took it and climbed out, and my knees did not hold.

He caught me by the elbow, careful of the bruise.

Behind us, the black SUV had stopped right at the white line.

Ugo stood at the open door with both hands visible.

Fourteen Ravello men had stepped out of the trucks, and every one of them had a gun held low and easy.

"Mr. Ravello," Ugo called, "the Don wants his wife back. This is a family matter."

"Then your Don can ask me for her himself."

"She's not well."

"She's driving a car and talking to me," Stefano said. "That's a good deal better than she looked on that table."

Ugo's face went still.

He had not known that I would tell anyone.

Neither had Rocco.

"Go home," Stefano said. "Tell him she's a guest on my bridge."

Ugo stood there for a long moment, then got back into the SUV.

It reversed slowly across the line, and the Ravello men holstered their guns one at a time.

I found that I was holding Stefano's sleeve with both hands.

I let go.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

"Get in the truck," he said. "I'll tell you where it's warm."

He drove me himself.

His house was a stone place on a hill above the harbor, with a wall around the garden and an old woman in the kitchen who looked at my arm and went to find a clean towel.

Stefano put a mug of tea in my hands and watched me drink half of it.

"You told sixty people what your husband did," he said. "I have a cousin who sat at the third table. He called me from his car."

"Then you know what I said."

"I know all five families heard it, and I know a woman stood up beside you."

I put the mug down.

"What do you want, Mr. Ravello?"

"Stefano."

"What do you want?"

"What you want," he said. "I want your husband to stop."

"Everyone wants that."

"Everyone was afraid of him on Friday," he said. "After today, they're a little less afraid."

He took a folded paper from his coat and set it on the table between us.

It was a hand-copied page from an old book.

"A Don swears an oath when he's made. If he breaks one he swore on his own blood, and the Commission votes that he broke it, he loses his family."

"Rocco swore at his mother's grave that I was the only woman he'd ever have."

"I know. Half the city heard about it when he did."

"Then they all know what he did on Friday."

"They know," he said. "Not one of them has said it out loud."

I looked at the page.

"You want me to say it at the Commission."

"I want you to say it in front of all five of them, to his face," Stefano said. "I'll stand next to you when you do."

"Why would you do that for me?"

He took a moment.

"Because I'm tired of watching him," he said.

It wasn't an answer.

It was the beginning of one, and I could tell he'd decided not to finish.

I opened my mouth to ask him about it.

A man came into the kitchen without knocking.

"Stefano," he said. "There's a convoy on the hill road. Six cars."

Stefano moved to the window.

I stood up beside him and looked down the long drive.

The first car was Rocco's black Mercedes.

Behind it came the doctor's gray sedan, and in the back seat of the Mercedes I could see Fabiola's blonde head against the glass.

The doctor was getting out of the second car with his bag in one hand.

In the other he carried a rubber tourniquet and an empty blood bag.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend