My Mafia Husband Never Filed Our Marriage, So I Walked Out Pregnant novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Night

Damian did not answer his grandfather.

Lena watched his jaw work, and she understood that he could not.

The only paper that mattered had been taken back across a clerk's counter by his own hand.

Forty people were waiting for him to lie or to fail.

"It's with the clerk," Lena said.

Every head turned toward her.

She kept her eyes on the old man.

"My husband is a careful man.

"You'll have a certified copy on this table by Monday noon."

Stavros's eyebrows rose a quarter inch.

"Monday."

"If you doubt it, send a boy to the window and ask."

It was the thinnest bluff she had ever made.

She did not know if it could be done.

Under the table Damian's hand found hers and held it so hard her fingers ached.

"Monday," the old man said at last, and tapped his cane. "Eat, everyone. The soup is getting cold."

Nobody ate.

Damian walked her out past the doormen with his hand on the small of her back.

He did not speak in the elevator.

He did not speak in the car, where the privacy glass rose behind the driver, and the dark city slid past in long bars of light.

At the town house he unlocked the front door himself and stood aside.

She went in first.

The hall was quiet.

It smelled of cedar and his soap.

On the table by the stairs, her bowl of hair pins sat where she had left it.

She turned around.

"You said it," she said.

"Yes."

"In front of all of them."

"I should have said it in October."

"I heard you." She took a step. "I'm not forgiving you tonight. I want that clear."

"Clear."

"But I'm not going to stand in your hall and pretend I don't want you."

His breath caught.

"You said not on a lie," Lena said. "There's no lie now. You told forty people the truth at their own table."

"Lena."

"Is that a threat or a promise?" she said, and watched the memory cross his face. "You asked me that with your blood on my hands. Now I'm asking you."

He crossed the hall in two strides.

His mouth came down on hers hard enough to push her back against the newel post.

She made a sound in her throat and dragged him in by the lapels.

It was nothing like the kisses she remembered.

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