I Married the Mafia Heir to Bury My Secret novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Wolf at Brunch

Rocco comes to the Don's table as a guest and says he and Mara were close once, and the Don says he would hand such a woman back himself.

"Which pictures?" I asked.

"The ones I can't stand to keep." Sandro let the corner burn down to his fingers and dropped it.

"You told me you couldn't destroy them."

"I told you a lot of things in the first month." He stood and brushed his knees. "People change their minds about the dead."

He swung the safe shut and spun the dial.

Then he crossed the room and put his hand on the back of my neck, warm and heavy.

"Go back to bed, Mara. I'll be there in a minute."

I went.

He didn't come in a minute.

He came when the window had gone gray, and lay down on top of the covers with his shoes still on.

At nine o'clock I woke to Bianca banging on the door with a tray.

"Brunch is at ten, and Papa wants the whole table," she called. "He's making an announcement and he's wearing the good tie."

She came in and set down coffee and a plate of cannoli, and flopped onto the foot of our bed.

Bianca was twenty-five, small and quick, and she had decided to love me at the rehearsal dinner.

"Did my brother behave himself?" she asked.

"He slept in his shoes."

"That's the most romantic thing he's ever done."

I laughed, and for one second my chest stopped hurting.

The dining room of the main house had a table for twenty.

The Don sat at the head with a napkin tucked in his collar, and the consigliere sat on his right with a folder.

Sandro held my chair.

He poured my juice from the pitcher himself and then poured his own, from a different glass.

Aurelio Vannozzi tapped his fork against his plate.

"Family," he said. "Three years we've had a cold peace with the Lupos. It's time to see if it can be warm."

The room went still, and I went stiffer than the room.

"Rocco Lupo comes at noon," said the Don. "He's bringing a wedding gift. He wants to sit at this table and talk about the harbor."

"Papa," Sandro said quietly. "At my wedding breakfast?"

"At your wedding breakfast, so everyone behaves."

Bianca looked at her brother, and then at me.

"Mara, you're white."

"I'm just tired," I said.

He came at noon exactly, in the gray overcoat, with a flat box under one arm.

Two of his men stayed in the hall.

Rocco shook the Don's hand, then kissed Bianca's cheek, then turned to me.

"Mrs. Vannozzi."

"Mr. Lupo."

"Please." He smiled at the table, and every head turned toward him. "Mara and I were close once, before she found a better family. I'd like to wish her every happiness."

Nobody at the table spoke.

I felt Sandro rise beside me.

He didn't say a word.

He put his hand flat on the small of my back, where Rocco's hand had been in the photo.

Everyone in the room had heard it.

If I lied now, Rocco would hand the lie back to me in pieces.

"He's my ex," I said, loud enough for the whole table. "I lived with him for two years and left. That was three years ago, and I haven't spoken to him since."

That last part was a lie, and the only one I dared.

Aurelio Vannozzi's eyes moved from my face to Rocco's and back.

"You told me you had a bad relationship," he said. "You didn't tell me whose."

"I didn't know it mattered, sir."

"It always matters."

"Aurelio," Rocco said easily. "Let the girl eat. I brought her a present."

He set the flat box on the table and opened it with two fingers.

Inside, on black velvet, lay a single crystal champagne glass.

"For the first toast in the new house," Rocco said. "Hand-blown."

Nobody moved to take it.

Sandro looked at the glass for a long moment, and his hand on my back went hard.

"We have glasses," he said.

"Not like this."

I picked it up before Sandro could speak, because I knew if I left it, Rocco would call it an insult.

The crystal was heavy and cold.

"Thank you," I said.

"It's nothing." Rocco took my free hand, bent, and kissed it.

His lips stayed against my knuckles a second too long, and his thumb pressed once on my pulse.

"Tonight," he said, barely above a breath. "Ten."

I pulled my hand away.

At the head of the table, Aurelio Vannozzi lifted his coffee cup.

"I'll say this once, in front of my son and his guest," he said. "A man who keeps secrets from this family I forgive once."

He drank.

"A wife who hides a Lupo's hand in my house, I'd hand back to the Lupos myself."

Rocco smiled across the table at me.

"A fair rule," he said.

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