From the Don's Son's Plus-Size Girl to His Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: No

Nobody in the line breathed.

Somebody's phone made the little chime it makes when it starts recording.

I looked down at Tiziano on my mother's tile.

Ten years ago I'd have fainted.

Five weeks ago I'd have said yes before he finished the sentence.

"Get up," I said.

He smiled. "Is that a yes?"

"It's a no." I put both hands flat on the glass. "No, Tiziano. Not to your mother's ring, not to you, not on any floor in Chicago."

The man at the front of the line let out a whistle.

Tiziano stayed on his knee a second too long.

Long enough for every phone to get it.

Then he stood up and brushed off his trousers, and he closed the velvet box with one hand.

"You don't know what you're saying no to," he said.

"I know exactly. I just said it to your face."

"You think he's better than me." He turned to the line, loud, like a man at a wedding toast. "You all want to know who she's choosing? You want to know what my brother is?"

"Tiziano," my mother said. "Out."

He didn't hear her.

"Sixteen years ago my father came home with a kid off the street. Lice. Ribs like a radiator. He'd been sleeping in a dumpster alley on this block." He pointed down the hall, past the walk-in, at our back door. "That one. Right out there by your vent."

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