The Don Chose His Mistress, So I Chose His Enemy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Hospital Bag
Giulia brings her best friend's hospital bag and finds her husband and twelve men waiting with an annulment; she signs, leaves her ring, and calls the number she has kept for eight years.
The annulment papers were read aloud in the maternity corridor of a South Side hospital, in front of twelve of my husband's men.
I had only come to bring Paola her hospital bag.
She had called me at six that evening, crying, and said she was bleeding and had nobody else to ask.
My husband was out of town, and he had texted me at noon to say so.
The sit-down is running long, home tomorrow, don't wait up.
Paola's last message said: Please don't tell anyone where you're going. I don't want a fuss.
I drove across the city with her bag on the passenger seat and the radio off.
Paola Ferrante had been my best friend since we were eleven years old at the same convent school.
I had gotten her the job keeping my husband's books.
When I lost our son at five months, she was the one who stayed in the room.
In the lobby her mother stood by the elevators in her church coat.
"Giulia, bless you," she said, and took both my hands. "Your father's driver brought me. He's so good to us."
Papa's driver took her to the clinic every Thursday.
I had always thought it was the kindest thing my father did all year.
The elevator opened on the fourth floor, and my husband was standing outside room 412.
His mother sat in a chair beside him with her purse on her knees.
His consigliere held a leather folder, and a dozen men stood along the wall with their hands folded in front of them.
Nobody looked surprised to see me.
"You came," Renato said. "Good. That saves me sending a car."
"You're out of town."
"That was for tonight," he said. "I wanted you here without a scene."
His mother patted the empty chair on her other side.
"Sit, Giulia."
I stayed standing.
The consigliere opened the folder and read in a flat voice that the marriage of Renato Falzone and Giulia Brandolini was dissolved, on the grounds that after eight years it had produced no living heir.
He read it loudly, so the whole corridor could hear.
Through the open door I could see Paola propped against the pillows, one hand over her mouth.
She had a monitor clipped to her finger and a pink blanket tucked up to her chest.
"Paola is carrying my son," Renato said. "Eight weeks. The doctors want her calm, and she needs me at her bed."
I looked at Paola.
She finally looked back at me, and her eyes were wet.
"Giulia, I didn't want you to find out like this," she said. "Please don't hate me. I couldn't bear it."
It was the same voice she had used at my son's funeral.
"You picked her," I said to my husband.
"I choose her," Renato said, loud enough for the end of the hall. "Everyone here heard me say it."
One of the men by the wall looked at his shoes.
"The annulment is clean and the settlement is fair," Renato went on. "You keep the coat you're wearing and the jewelry in your own name."
"And my father?"
"Your father has seen the papers," he said. "He said to sign."
Papa had not called me once in two days.
I thought about that and set it aside.
There were twelve men and a nurse watching, and I was not going to cry in front of any of them.
The consigliere held out a pen.
So I signed.
I did not write Giulia Falzone.
I wrote Giulia Brandolini, with the long tail on the G that my mother taught me, and the whole corridor watched me do it.
Then I took off my wedding ring and set it on top of the folder.
"This stays with the papers," I said.
I held Paola's hospital bag out to Renato's mother.
"Her good slippers are in the side pocket. She'll want them tomorrow."
She took it without a word.
Nobody stopped me at the elevator.
In the parking garage I sat in my car with the engine off and took my mother's rosary case out of my coat.
Behind the little silver cross, folded small, was the card a stranger had pressed into my palm at my wedding reception.
It had a phone number and nothing else.
Underneath, in a slanting hand: If you ever want a door.
I had kept it for eight years and never dialed it.
I dialed it now.
He answered before the first ring finished.
"Giulia Brandolini," Declan Harrigan said, using my maiden name as if he had never stopped. "I wondered which year."
"Tonight."
"Then go to Midway. Gate for private flights." I heard a door close on his end.
"The plane has been fueled since the day you married him."
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