The Mafia Bride They Rejected Became an Underboss novel · Chapter 3 of 16

Chapter 3: Sunday Calls

Vera plays her father's last voicemail to the room, and that night Stefano kneels at her hotel door with her old ring as Carina films from the elevator.

My mother's hand dropped to her side.

"That's a lie."

"Every Sunday at seven, my time," I said. "Eight o'clock here. After Mass and before the game."

Her face changed.

That was exactly when my father used to disappear into his study with the door shut.

For a year, she'd thought it was the bookie.

"No," she said. "No, he would have told me."

"He wanted to be sure first."

"Sure of what?"

I didn't look at Lorenzo.

I didn't have to. Everyone else was looking at him for me.

He laughed, but it came out thin.

"Mom, she's making it up. She wants the house. She wants money. Look at her."

I took out my phone.

I had kept every voicemail. I had listened to the last one in a gas station parking lot in Oklahoma at three in the morning.

I turned the volume all the way up.

Then I pressed play and held it up in the silent room.

My father's voice filled the house.

"Verina. It's Dad."

My mother made a sound.

Nobody else called me Verina.

"I'm running late, the damn Bears are losing. Listen. I talked to that trucker's cousin in Tucumcari. He says the guy never had a girlfriend. He says the guy got paid."

A cough. A long breath.

"I know who paid him. I think I always knew. I just didn't want it to be my own boy."

Lorenzo lunged for the phone.

Hector caught his wrist in midair without any hurry at all.

My father kept talking.

"I'm going to fix it. I'm going to do it right, in front of the whole family. Come home for Thanksgiving. Bring all the kids. I want to meet the little one who eats jerky."

Chuy looked up from the jerky.

"That's me," he said.

"I love you, baby girl. Come home."

The message ended.

My father had died nine days later.

For a long moment, the only sound was the grandfather clock.

My mother sat down on the arm of the sofa.

"Lorenzo," she said.

"It's fake." Lorenzo yanked his wrist out of Hector's grip. "You can make anybody say anything with a computer now. Right, Stefano? Tell her."

Stefano didn't say anything.

He was looking at me.

Not at my jeans this time.

At my face.

Carina saw it. Her nails dug into his sleeve.

"Babe. Say something."

"I think," Stefano said slowly, "we should all calm down."

It was the most useless thing I had ever heard.

I turned off the phone and put it back in my pocket.

"I'm staying at the Peninsula," I said to the room. "The funeral's at ten. I'll be in the front pew."

"The front pew is for family," Carina said.

"Then I'll see you there."

I walked out with eight kids behind me and Hector bringing up the rear.

Nobody tried to stop us.

The suite at the Peninsula had three bedrooms and a bathtub the size of a canoe.

The kids had never seen it.

Mateo tried every button in the elevator. Beni ordered four cheeseburgers from room service. Pilar and Paz fell asleep in the bathtub with their clothes on.

It was eleven before they were all down.

I stood in the hall outside the suite with my shoes in my hand.

My cheek still stung.

The elevator dinged.

Stefano Marchetti stepped out alone.

He'd taken off his tie. His hair was pushed back.

"Hector's in the room across the hall," I said. "He doesn't sleep."

"I just want to talk."

"So talk."

He stopped a few feet away.

"I didn't know about Boyd," he said. "I swear to God, Vera. Lorenzo said you'd be sick for a night. He said you'd wake up embarrassed and go stay with your aunt in Florida."

"And when I didn't come back?"

He looked at the carpet.

"They said you ran off."

"And you married my sister six weeks later."

"Our fathers had a deal. It had to be a Lombardi girl."

"Any Lombardi girl."

He flinched.

"It was always supposed to be you," he said. "I was twenty-seven and stupid. Carina was there, and she wanted it so badly, and Lorenzo made it easy."

"It sounds hard for you."

"Don't." He took a step closer. "I've thought about you every day for eight years."

He reached into his jacket.

He took out a small red box.

When he opened it, I saw a thin gold band with a single round diamond.

My grandmother's ring.

The one my father had given Stefano to give to me, before the Marchetti emerald was ever in the picture.

"I kept it," he said. "I couldn't let her have this one."

Then Stefano Marchetti got down on one knee in the hotel hallway.

"Leave Duarte. Come home. I'll leave Carina tomorrow. We'll do it right this time."

Behind him, the elevator dinged again.

The doors slid open.

Carina stood inside in her black silk, with her phone held up in front of her face.

The little red light was on.

She was recording.

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