Merciless Contract: The Syndicate's Unwanted Wife novel · Chapter 12 of 32
Chapter 12: Saturday
The Don's dining room held the same eleven men and the same silver tureen.
This time Raffaele pulled out Gemma's chair himself, and placed her on his right hand.
A murmur ran down the table.
Vittorio looked at the chair and at his son's bandaged arm, and said nothing.
"We have something to say before the soup," Raffaele said.
"I'm told there was a fire at the Harbor Crest," Vittorio replied pleasantly. "Three Orsatti dead, a night manager who forgot what he saw. Sit, my son, and eat."
"I'll stand."
Raffaele stood, and rested both hands on the table.
"My wife was set up," he said. "The texts on her phone were written by her stepmother, and every word of the story about her was a lie."
"The bride I was promised never fell ill. She ran to the Orsatti heir with my harbor map, and her mother sent my wife to the altar to be shot."
"I believed them," he said. "I called her a thief in this house, and then I locked her on a terrace in November for an hour, in a wedding dress."
Nobody at the table moved.
"That was my doing," Raffaele said. "I was wrong, and I say so in front of every man who watched her serve your soup."
Gemma looked up at him.
She had asked him for it, and still she had not expected the words.
"Sit down, Raffaele," Vittorio said, softly.
"I'm not done."
"You're a husband of five days, and you are shaming my table."
"The shame is mine, and I'll carry it."
The room was silent.
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