From the Don's Son's Plus-Size Girl to His Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: You Owe Me a Year

Meghan turns Tiziano down at her own counter and makes Killian take her to the engagement party, then learns Tiziano kept screenshots of her messages.

My mother set the knife down very gently on the cutting board.

That was worse than if she'd pointed it at him.

"Tiziano," she said. "I changed your diapers at your christening party. Your mother asked me to."

"And I'm grateful, Mrs. Fennelly." He took his sunglasses off and folded them. "Seven thousand two hundred. Or one apology."

Every phone in the line was pointed at me.

I wiped my hands on my apron.

I walked around the end of the counter and came out on his side of the glass.

Up close, the mark on his cheek was the exact shape of my hand.

"No," I said.

He smiled wider. "No to which part?"

"All of it. I'm not coming to your party. I'm not getting on my knees. And you're not raising my mother's rent, because your father eats here every Thursday and he doesn't know you're doing it."

Somebody in the line said, "Oh, damn."

Tiziano's smile didn't move.

"My father's going to hear you hit me."

"Good. Tell him why."

He looked at me for a second too long.

It wasn't the waitress look from the roof.

I didn't know what it was.

"Saturday," he said. "Eight o'clock. The ballroom. You've got a week to find some manners."

He put his sunglasses back on and walked out down the middle of the line, and his men went after him.

The door jingled.

My mother picked up her knife again.

"Eileen Fennelly does not pay seven thousand dollars for this tile floor," she told the rye. "I'll burn it first."

"Ma."

"I'll burn it with him in it."

"Ma, there's a line."

She looked up at the line. The line looked at her.

"Who's next," she said, and the line came back to life.

I made sandwiches until two.

Then I took off my apron, and I didn't touch the hook by the slicer.

At nine that night, I stood outside a brick warehouse on Fulton Street with a white paper bag in my hand.

It had taken me two hours of scrolling to find it.

He'd sent me a picture once, in May, of a big steel window with rain on it, and the corner of a sign for a meat packer across the street.

I'd thought it was Tiziano's office.

I pressed the only buzzer.

Nothing.

I pressed it again and held it.

The speaker clicked.

"It's ten degrees colder than you think it is," said his voice. "You're not wearing a coat."

I looked up. There was a camera over the door.

"Let me in."

The lock buzzed.

The loft was one huge room up a flight of iron stairs.

Brick walls, a long steel window, a big bed on a platform at the far end, made tight.

And a kitchen.

A real one, with a gas range and a pot on it, and garlic in the air.

He was standing at the stove in a gray T-shirt with a dish towel over his shoulder.

The scar went up out of the neck of the shirt and over his left shoulder, thick and white and old.

"You cook," I said.

"You told me to learn." He stirred the pot. "In April. You said a man who can't make his own dinner is a man who'll expect you to."

I set the paper bag down on his counter.

"Your brother came into my deli this morning."

"I know. Two of the men in the line work for me."

"Then you know what he wants."

"You on your knees." His jaw moved. "He's been asking for that since he was twelve. Not from you. From anybody."

"I'm going to that party."

He stopped stirring.

"And you're taking me," I said.

He turned the burner off. He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms.

"Why."

"Because you owe me a year." I put my hands flat on the counter. "Because if I walk in there alone, I'm the deli girl who got laughed off a roof. If I walk in there with you, I'm a problem."

"You'd be my problem."

"You'd be his."

Something happened at the corner of his mouth. It wasn't quite a smile.

"What are you going to do when you get there?"

"I'm going to talk."

"About what?"

"About a napkin."

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he got a plate down from the shelf and filled it from the pot.

Rigatoni, sausage, a red sauce that was better than it had any right to be.

He put a fork on it and slid it across the counter to me.

"I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten since five this morning," he said. "Your mom posted the line. You were in the back of every picture."

I sat down on his stool.

I ate the whole plate.

He didn't say anything while I did it. He just leaned there and watched me eat.

"This is good," I said with my mouth full.

"I know."

"Don't be smug about it."

"I'm a little smug about it."

I pushed the plate back and opened the paper bag.

Two cannoli. My mother's.

I'd told him a hundred times I wasn't eating them.

I gave him one and took the other one.

"Fine," I said. "I'm going to eat a cannoli. Write it down."

"I'll take you," he said. "Saturday."

"Good."

"One condition."

I waited.

"You don't pretend." His gray eyes didn't leave my face. "If you walk in on my arm, you're on my arm. I'm not a prop."

My face went hot.

"Fine."

I stood up and got my bag.

He walked me to the top of the iron stairs.

I was three steps down when he said my name again.

"Meghan. You should know one more thing before Saturday."

I looked back up at him.

"Tiziano didn't just laugh at them," he said. "He kept screenshots."

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