Dumped My Ex, Married the Mafia Don novel · Chapter 21 of 32

Chapter 21: Mini Golf

Valerio stepped back.

He picked one of my hairpins up off the hood of the car and held it out to me.

"Properly," he said.

"Properly."

"That takes a while."

"It should."

He nodded, and drove me home, and didn't ask to come up.

On Thursday night, Tito called at eight for his question.

"Can Daddy take you on a date?"

I sat down on my iron bed.

"Who's asking?"

"Me. I planned it. It's mini golf. There's a whale."

"Did Daddy ask you to ask me?"

"No," Tito said. "Daddy said I'm not allowed to ask you. So I'm asking."

In the background, I heard Valerio say, "Tito," in a very strained voice.

"Saturday," I said. "Tell Daddy I have rules."

The mini golf was off Route 1, behind a fried clam shack, with a fiberglass whale on the ninth hole.

Valerio got out of the car in jeans and a white shirt.

I had never seen him in jeans.

I didn't say anything. I just looked for a while.

He noticed.

"Rules," he said.

"No bodyguard on the course. I pay for my own ball. Loser buys ice cream. And nobody talks about the case."

"Agreed."

"You didn't argue."

"You'd win," he said, and I had to turn away so he wouldn't see my face.

Tito was the scorekeeper. He had a tiny pencil and a card and the authority of a judge.

Valerio was terrible.

He took the first hole like a man who'd been told the ball owed him money.

It bounced off the windmill and came back to his feet.

"Seven," Tito announced.

"That was four."

"Objection," Tito said. "It was seven."

I got a hole in one on the third hole.

Tito wrote down zero.

"That's not how it works, partner."

"Jo-Jo gets zero," he said firmly. "Because she's my client."

"Your client," Valerio said. "Since when?"

"Since the cookies."

At the whale, Valerio's ball went in the blowhole and didn't come out.

He crouched and stared into the whale's mouth with total concentration.

"Leave it," I said. "It's evidence now."

He started laughing.

It was a real laugh, out loud, surprised out of him.

Three families on the next hole turned to stare at the don of the Ruggeri family, laughing at a whale.

He lost by eleven strokes, even by honest math.

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