The Mafia Lost His Queen novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The River

Armando swears he never opened her gift, Gianna takes her mother's ring back off Serena's hand, and at 3 a.m. Rory drives her car into the river, until Armando puts a gun to his head on the bank.

Rory didn't ask me if I was sure.

He looked at me for a long moment, and then he pulled the chair to the side of the bed and sat down.

"Not tonight," he said quietly. "Tonight you sleep. Tomorrow night, if you still mean it."

"I'll still mean it."

"Then tomorrow."

He stayed in that chair until the sun came up.

At seven the door opened, and my husband came in carrying white roses.

Armando looked tired. His tie was gone, and his collar was open.

He laid the roses on my blanket.

"Gianna." He sat on the bed and took my hand. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I stared at him.

"It was on your desk," I said. "In the silver box. I left it there yesterday morning."

He shook his head slowly.

"I never opened it. I was buried in the Abate deal all day. I didn't even see it."

"You didn't see a silver box with a ribbon on it."

"Sweetheart, I didn't know." He kissed my knuckles. "If I'd known, I'd never have asked you to do any of that."

He had held out his hand to her at the top of those stairs.

I didn't say it.

I looked at the roses instead.

"There's something else," he said. "Serena's moved into the house. With the baby coming, the Abates want her where my men can watch her."

"Into the house."

"You'll have the guest wing. It's quieter. You need rest."

He patted my hand and stood up.

At the door he stopped and looked at Rory.

"You took your time bringing my car back."

Rory said nothing.

Armando left.

They sent me home at noon.

The housekeeper met me at the kitchen door and couldn't look me in the eye.

I went up the main stairs instead of the back ones, one at a time, holding the rail.

The door to my bedroom was open.

Serena was sitting at my vanity in my blue silk robe, brushing her hair with my brush.

Two maids were carrying my dresses out of the closet in armfuls.

"Oh," Serena said to the mirror. "You're back."

Then I saw her left hand.

She was wearing my mother's ring.

It was a thin gold band with one small garnet. My father put it on my mother's finger in 1983. It was the only thing of hers I had.

It had been in my jewelry box that morning.

"Take that off," I said.

Serena held her hand up to the light and turned it.

"Armando said I could have anything in here I wanted."

"That isn't Armando's to give."

I walked across the room.

The maids stopped in the doorway with my dresses in their arms.

I took Serena's wrist in one hand and pulled the ring off her finger with the other.

It scraped over her knuckle.

She screamed like I'd cut her.

"Armando! Armando, she attacked me!"

He came fast.

He saw the ring in my fist, and the maids, and Serena holding her hand to her chest.

He took my wrist and squeezed.

Hard enough that the bones ground together.

"Give it back to her."

"It was my mother's."

"I said give it back."

Then Rory was there, between us, not touching either of us.

He just stood very close to Armando and looked at him.

"Sir," Rory said. "The staff."

Armando looked at the maids in the doorway.

He let go of my wrist.

"Not in front of the staff," he said to me, low. "We'll talk tonight."

He took Serena out of the room with his arm around her.

I put my mother's ring on my right hand.

It fit the way it always had.

That night Armando didn't come to the guest wing to talk.

I heard music from the master bedroom until one.

At a quarter to three, Rory knocked twice on my door.

It was raining hard.

I wore jeans and a black sweater and nothing else of mine.

I left my phone on the nightstand. I left my wedding ring on, because a drowned woman would still be wearing it.

Rory walked me down the back stairs, past the cellar door.

I didn't look at it.

My black Mercedes was waiting by the garage with the engine running.

We drove to the public boat launch on the Des Plaines River with the headlights off for the last half mile.

The river was high and brown and fast. It was carrying whole branches.

Rory stopped at the top of the ramp.

"Give me the ring," he said.

I twisted my wedding ring off and put it in his palm.

He set it in the cupholder.

Then he took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders.

"Under the bridge," he said. "Don't come out. Whatever you see. Whatever you hear."

"Rory."

"Whatever you hear, Gianna."

It was the first time in five years he had said my first name.

I ran for the bridge.

I crouched in the mud under the concrete with the rain coming down in sheets beside me.

He drove the car straight down the ramp into the river.

It floated for a terrible second, nose down.

Then the water took it.

Seconds crawled by.

His head came up downstream, black and slick, and he swam hard for the bank.

He crawled out on the ramp on his hands and knees.

He was still coughing when he dialed.

"Nine one one? A car's gone into the Des Plaines at the boat launch. A woman's inside."

Then he made the second call.

Headlights came down the road eight minutes later.

Three cars.

Armando's men got out first and dragged Rory up the ramp by his collar.

They threw him down in front of the headlights and kicked him until he stopped trying to get up.

Then the back door of the last car opened, and Armando got out into the rain.

He looked at the river.

He looked at the empty place where the car had gone.

He walked to Rory and pulled a gun from under his coat.

He put it against Rory's forehead.

"You let her drive," Armando said.

"She took the keys." Rory's voice was rough with river water. "I went in after her. I couldn't find her."

Armando pressed the barrel harder.

"Then go back in," he said. "And don't come out without her."

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