My Mafia Husband Gave His Ex a Baby, So I Took Her Husband novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Pie With Mrs. Bastiani

In a late-night diner Teo re-dresses her hand, admits he is infertile and has known for months, and they agree to find the debt and keep their hands off each other until it is named; Delfina's driver comes to fetch him and Teo says he is having pie with Mrs. Bastiani.

Halsted Diner was bright and half full at three in the morning.

A table of nurses in scrubs ate eggs by the window, and a trucker slept sitting up at the counter.

Rina parked across the street with the engine running and told me she would wait.

"If he looks at you wrong, flash the headlights," she said.

"You can't see inside from here."

"Then I'll come in and look at him wrong myself."

Teo Garavani sat in the last booth with his back to the wall and a cup of coffee he hadn't touched.

He had changed out of his wet shirt into a black sweater.

He stood when I came in, which no man had done for me in a diner before.

"Mrs. Bastiani."

"Don't call me that tonight."

"Cecilia, then."

"Cece."

He sat down again and nodded at the seat across from him.

A waitress with a pencil in her hair brought me a coffee without asking, and I wrapped both hands around it.

"Show me your palm," Teo said.

"Rina already fixed it."

"Show me anyway."

I put my left hand on the table, and he turned it over.

The butterfly strips Rina had stuck on had peeled at one end, and a thin red line showed through.

He took a small first aid kit from his coat pocket and cleaned the cut with a wipe.

His hands were big and very careful.

He pressed two fresh strips across it, then wrapped the whole palm in clean gauze.

"I was a medic for six years," he said. "Before my father died."

"It doesn't need a medic."

"No. It needed someone who wasn't angry."

His thumb rested on the inside of my wrist when he finished, right on my pulse.

It stayed there one beat too long.

"You're fine," he said, and let go.

I put my hand back around the coffee and told myself that was a habit he'd learned in the army.

"Why did you ask me here?" I said.

"Because you asked him why, and he said he owed her."

"You were listening at my sister's door?"

"His men were at the end of the street. So was one of mine." He shrugged. "I didn't need to be close."

I thought about that. Both our families had watched my sister's building while I bled on her kitchen table.

"I'm going to tell you something I haven't told anyone," Teo said. "In March my doctor sent me to a specialist. I'd been trying with Delfina for three years, and nothing."

He looked at his coffee.

"The specialist said I can't father a child. He said it's not a maybe."

My stomach turned over for him, even then.

"In April Delfina sat me down in the kitchen and told me she was pregnant."

"And you didn't say."

"I told her I was happy."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to know who she thought would be the father," Teo said. "She never had a lover. I had a man on her for four months. She went to her mother's, to church and to the doctor."

"And Leandro?"

"They haven't been in a room alone since our wedding. I'd know."

I looked at him, and I believed him, which was worse.

"Then he didn't sleep with her," I said slowly.

"I don't know what he did."

"He said, 'I gave her this child.'"

"I know what he said."

We sat in the noise of the diner, with plates clinking and the nurses laughing at something.

"He owed her," I said. "That's the word he used. Not 'loved.' Not 'wanted.'"

"A debt." Teo turned the cup a quarter turn on its saucer. "I'd like to know what it was. I think you would too."

"What's your plan?"

"Find out. And until we do, I think we stay out of each other's way."

I almost laughed.

"You think we should avoid each other. You asked me here at three in the morning."

"I mean we keep our hands to ourselves," he said evenly. "I won't have it said I took Leandro Bastiani's wife out of spite. And I won't have you thinking I'm using you."

"And I won't be the woman who ran to the nearest man in a dress."

"Then it's agreed. Nobody touches anybody until the debt is named."

"Agreed."

We shook on it, which meant that we touched.

His hand was warm and dry, and I took mine back faster than I meant to.

I did not say that I'd wished his thumb had stayed on my wrist.

The bell over the door rang.

A man in a black overcoat stepped in, shook the rain off his shoulders, and walked straight to our booth.

I recognized him. He was Delfina's driver, and I had watched him hold her car door at the dinner.

"Mr. Garavani," he said. "Mrs. Garavani wants you home."

Every head in the diner turned.

Teo put his coffee down very slowly.

"Tell my wife," he said, in a voice that carried to the counter, "that I'm having pie with Mrs. Bastiani."

The waitress with the pencil in her hair set a slice of apple pie in front of him and two forks.

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