My Mafia Husband Gave His Ex a Baby, So I Took Her Husband novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Thursday

Leandro comes to Rina's flat at 2 a.m. and asks Cece home for Thursday's family meeting; she tells him she has copied every ledger and he admits he owed Delfina one thing; a text from Teo asks her to meet.

Teo Garavani parked on Taylor Street at a quarter to midnight and did not turn off the headlights.

"This is the building," I said.

"I know it is. Your sister pours the best old fashioned on this street."

He looked at me once, and waited for me to ask how he knew.

I didn't ask. I was too tired to be curious about the man whose wife had just ruined my life.

"Give me your number," he said. "I'll want to talk to you soon."

I wrote it on the back of his parking receipt with the pen from his glove box.

My hand was shaking so hard the sevens looked like ones.

He read it back to me, corrected the sevens, and drove away without another word.

Rina opened her door in a sleep shirt and her bar apron, because she had just got home from closing.

She saw my face, then my hand, and then the green dress.

"Cece, what did he do?"

"He told his mother's whole table that he had a baby with Delfina."

"With Delfina Corvino?"

"Garavani, now."

Rina pulled me inside by the good arm and sat me down at her kitchen table.

She got out the first aid kit she kept for bar fights and cleaned my palm with whiskey.

"Two stitches' worth," she said. "I can do butterfly strips."

"Do it."

She did it, swearing under her breath the whole time, and when she was finished she hugged me so hard my ribs hurt.

I let her.

I felt empty, with nothing left in the middle of me to cry with.

At two in the morning there was a knock at the door.

It was a polite knock, three taps, spaced out.

Rina and I looked at each other, because we both knew who knocked like that.

"I'll tell him to go to hell," Rina said.

"No. Let him in. I want him to say it in front of you."

Leandro stood in the hall in his dinner jacket, with a man on each side of him.

He looked tired and perfectly calm. His hair was still combed.

"You left this," he said, and held out my wedding ring.

Someone had washed the gravy off it.

I didn't take it.

He set it on the shelf by the door, between Rina's keys and a bowl of lemon candies.

"Come home, Cece," he said. "Mama is upset. The video is already on two phones I know of, and the families meet Thursday. They need to see us at the same table."

"They saw us at the same table tonight."

"They saw a bad dinner. Thursday can be a good one."

"You told me you gave her a baby."

"I did."

"Why?"

"She asked me for one thing," Leandro said. "I owed her."

"What did you owe her?"

He looked past me at Rina, and Rina looked back at him with her arms crossed.

"That isn't yours to know," he said.

For five years I had thought he told me everything.

I had done the restaurants' books for all five, and I had believed that was the proof.

"Then I'm not coming home," I said.

Leandro smiled a little.

"You will. You don't have a dollar of your own, you don't have a coat, and you don't have a Bastiani name to make anyone open a door for you."

"I have the books."

He stopped smiling.

"I send the numbers to myself every Sunday," I said. "The cash, the suppliers, the men on the payroll who don't show up. I've done it since the first year, because you told me not to trust a single copy."

The man on his left shifted his feet.

"That's a threat," Leandro said quietly.

"It's a fact. I'm telling you where I stand."

He looked at me for a long moment. I had never once stood against him, and I think he was trying to find the part of me that would give.

"Thursday," he said at last. "Think about Thursday."

He and his men walked away down the stairs, one flight and then the next.

Rina locked the door, put on the chain, and slid the bolt.

"Is that true?" she said. "About Sundays?"

"Every Sunday for five years."

She laughed, one short breath. Then she picked up my ring from the shelf and held it between two fingers.

"I'll put it in the toilet."

"Put it in the drawer," I said. "I'm not done with it."

I sat down on her sofa with a blanket and my phone, which had been in the pocket of the green dress all night.

It was the only thing I owned.

At 2:41 a message came in from a number I didn't know.

I'd like to know what he owed her. So would you. Halsted Diner, one hour. Come alone. T.

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