My Mafia Family Chose Their Adopted Daughter, So I Married the Don They Feared novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Wrong Flat

Her brother's guards break in to drag her home, see her husband's face and retreat. At the villa her sister offers to call it a joke, and Santo's hand goes still at the sight of a medal.

Santo opened the door before they could kick it.

He stood in his undershirt with both hands empty and his bare feet planted on the boards.

Four of my brother's guards filled the landing.

The one in front was the head of Massimo's detail.

He was a thick man who had once carried me to bed when I had a fever.

"Signora Viola," he said, not looking at Santo. "Your brother sent us. You're coming home."

"I'm not," I said from the bed.

"We have orders."

"Then you have a problem."

He stepped into the room, and for the first time he looked at the man in front of him.

He stopped.

His face went the gray of old plaster, and the hand he had raised to take my arm stayed in the air.

Santo said nothing at all.

The guard's mouth opened and closed, and then he lowered his hand and took one step back, and another.

"Wrong flat," he said.

"Boss?" one of the others said.

"I said wrong flat. Out. All of you, out."

Their boots went down the stairs much faster than they had come up.

On the second landing a line of men in white aprons stood shoulder to shoulder against the wall.

Their gutting knives were still in their belts, and Gaspare stood at the end with his arms folded.

None of them said a word to the guards, and the guards did not say one to them.

The street door shut.

I sat on the bed with my pulse in my throat.

"He knew you," I said.

"He knows a lot of people."

"He was afraid of you."

"He was afraid of waking up a fish market at three in the morning," Santo said. "Go to sleep, Viola."

Thirty days, I reminded myself.

That was a question about him, not about where he went at night, and I was too tired to argue the difference.

In the morning Gaspare sent up coffee and a loaf still warm from the oven.

I ate it at the table in the beggar's coat while the harbor filled with light.

"I want my mother's things," I said.

Santo looked up from the window. "Her things."

"Her pearls, her sewing box, her letters. They're in my room at the villa."

"I want them before my brother decides to throw them out."

"Then we'll go."

"You don't have to."

"I'm your husband for the next twenty-nine days at least," he said. "Let me stand there."

The guards at the villa gate had been told something.

They watched us climb the drive on foot, the bride in a borrowed gray coat and the beggar beside her.

Not one of them stopped us.

Nerina and Tullio were sitting under the lemon trees in the garden with coffee between them.

They stood up together, too fast, and Tullio pulled his chair a step away from hers.

"Viola," Nerina said. Her eyes were swollen. "You came back."

"For my mother's things."

"You don't have to do this." She came toward me with both hands out. "Massimo's angry, but I've talked to him. If you come home, he'll say last night was a joke. He'll say he drank too much. Nobody will think less of you."

"Four hundred people watched your Tullio tell me he loved you."

"He's not my Tullio," she whispered, and looked at him anyway.

"I'm sorry, Viola," Tullio said. His watch was on his wrist and he checked it. "I wanted to tell you privately. Massimo didn't give me a choice."

"He gave you a seat at the Table."

Tullio flushed to the roots of his hair.

"Take the offer," he said. "Before he changes his mind."

"I'll take my mother's pearls," I said. "Where are they?"

Nerina's hand went to her neck.

Under the medal on its thin chain, she was wearing my mother's pearls.

"Massimo gave them to me," she said. "He said you wouldn't mind. You never wore them."

"Take them off."

"Viola."

"Now, Nerina."

She struggled with the clasp, crying, and Tullio moved to help her and she waved him off.

As she bent her head, the little black medal slid forward on its chain and swung against her collarbone.

Beside me, Santo had not moved at all.

His hand on my elbow had gone completely still, and it had tightened.

I looked up at his face.

His eyes were on the medal, and his jaw was locked.

"Santo?" I said.

"Take your mother's pearls," he said quietly. "And let's go."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend