The Don's Pregnant Wife Ran to His Enemy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three Rules

In Raf's house on Long Island, Elena gets three rules and a locked door while Sandro goes on television pretending she was kidnapped. His call ends with a threat to take the child and a question about Raf's secret.

At the first toll booth Dario took my phone, pulled out the SIM card, and dropped the phone into the cup holder of a passing produce truck.

"Pennsylvania," he said. "Let Sandro chase lettuce for an hour."

It was the first time I had almost smiled all day.

Raf looked out his own window and said nothing.

We drove east for thirteen hours, and stopped only for gas.

It was night when we reached the house on the bluff above Long Island Sound, behind a stone wall and a gate.

It was gray, with white shutters and a porch light burning.

A small woman in an apron was standing on the porch steps with a wooden spoon in her fist.

"Elena!"

"Zia Teresa?"

I got out of the car before it stopped.

She came down the steps like a woman half her age and crushed me against her chest.

She smelled of garlic and lemon soap and my father's kitchen.

"Look at you. Too thin. Three years in that tomb and nobody feeds you." She held me out at arm's length. "Where is the ring?"

"On the counter."

"Good. On the counter is where a ring like that belongs."

Then she saw Raf behind me, and her face changed.

"Montano," she said.

"Signora Rinaldi."

"You brought her."

"I brought her."

"You eat today?" she asked him, in the same hard tone.

Raf blinked.

"No."

"Then you eat. Everybody eats. Then we talk like people."

I turned to him, and for the first time that day he looked almost lost.

"She called me from your kitchen at seven this morning," Teresa said to me. "He had a man in Brooklyn at my door by half past. I did not ask questions. I packed my pots."

"You brought your pots?"

"Elena. I brought my pots."

We ate at a long wooden table in a kitchen with eight chairs.

Teresa had put a pot of braised short ribs on the stove in the time it took us to drive in, which meant she had started before we arrived.

Raf ate without speaking.

I watched him over my fork.

He ate like a man who had not sat down to a meal in a long time.

Dario ate standing, by the door.

When the plates were cleared, Raf folded his hands on the table.

"Three rules," he said.

I set down my glass.

"This house is yours until the child is born. You stay as long as you need to."

"And in exchange?"

"You tell me nothing about Pagano business that you do not choose to tell me."

I had expected a price.

I had not expected him to turn down the one thing he wanted most.

"And the second rule?"

"I do not touch you unless you ask me to."

Teresa, at the sink, made a sound that might have been a cough.

I felt heat climb my neck.

"I won't ask," I said.

"Then it is an easy rule."

"And the third?"

"You do not leave this house without two of my men. Not for a walk, not for a church. Not for anything."

"A prisoner."

"A guest with a very large guard."

"Does the guest get a lock on her bedroom door?"

He took a key from his pocket and slid it across the table.

I looked at it.

Then I picked it up.

"Fine," I said.

I had not been this close to him before.

Up close, the gray in his hair was not from age.

There was a thin scar through one eyebrow that I had never seen in the funeral photographs.

He was watching me, too.

His phone buzzed on the table.

He read the screen, and his jaw went hard.

"Turn on the television," he said to Dario.

The news came on in the middle of a sentence.

A reporter stood outside a Chicago restaurant with her coat collar up.

"...police have not confirmed reports that Elena Pagano, wife of the businessman Alessandro Pagano, was abducted from her home this morning. Mr. Pagano's family has issued a statement."

The screen cut to Sandro.

He wore a dark suit and stood in front of the Pagano family crest.

His eyes were red.

I had never in three years seen my husband cry.

"My wife is missing," he said. "Six weeks ago I received a threat from Raffaele Montano. I believed it was empty. I was wrong. If anyone has information, I will pay any price. And I promise the man responsible that I will find her."

Teresa dropped her wooden spoon into the sink.

"That bastard," she said. "That bastard is crying."

I could not speak.

Every word was a lie, and every word was perfect.

He had never loved me, and he was weeping on camera for the whole country.

Raf's phone rang again.

He glanced at the screen and then, to my surprise, turned it toward me.

The caller was my husband.

"He wants to talk to you," Raf said. "Your choice."

I took a long breath.

I pressed the speaker.

"Elena." Sandro's voice was soft, warm, a little hoarse. The same voice that had once said my father's name at the grave. "Amore. Come home. We'll forget this stupid morning."

I said nothing.

"I know you are with him. I forgive it." He waited. "Tell him you were frightened. Tell him you want to come home, and I will let him live."

The kitchen was silent.

"Sandro," I said.

"Yes, my love?"

"Gia is in my bed."

A small pause.

"Gia is an old friend who needed somewhere to sleep," he said. "You're upset."

"Clause nine."

The line went quiet.

When he spoke again, the warmth had drained out of his voice.

"Then you have read it," he said. "Good. Then you understand. The child is mine, Elena. It will be born in my house, whether you walk in the door or I carry it out of his."

My hand closed on the table edge.

"And Raffaele?" Sandro went on. "Ask him what he did at our wedding party. Ask him why he never told you."

Raf had gone completely still.

The line clicked dead.

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