The Mafia Wife's Revenge novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Cripple

Helena demands a divorce, slaps her husband, and Camilla's father and brother walk through the door.

Tears ran down my face and dripped onto the broken glass.

Damian took a step toward me and put on his gentlest voice.

"Helena, you're better. Why didn't you tell me? Baby, I'm so..."

"Stop."

My voice scraped out of me.

"Stop acting, Damian. I want a divorce."

I made myself look straight at him.

"My mother's death, my kidnapping, my eyes, my ears. I'm reporting every bit of it, and I'll follow it to the end."

Every word hurt my throat.

It felt like the knife was opening me again.

The softness left his face all at once.

"A divorce?"

He looked me over from my scar to my dead right eye.

"Helena, think. You're a cripple now. Who else would want you?"

For three years strangers had stared at me in the street.

I had felt their pity on my skin, and I had learned to bear it.

But hearing that word in his voice was worse than the knife.

I raised my hand and hit him as hard as I could.

The crack of it rang through the room.

Camilla gasped behind him.

"What about my mother?" I said. "She was a living woman with a name, and you walked her into a grave."

"Do you have a heart at all?"

He touched his cheek and did not answer.

"You owe my mother everything," I said. "She sold her house and the cornea of her left eye so you could start your clean company."

"You took it, and you called it luck."

"She never asked you for one thing back."

He had a red handprint on his face, and he was the calmest man in the room.

That was the worst of it.

"Helena, I admit your mother helped me when I had nothing."

"So the night she died, I paid for the best funeral New York could offer. I did my part."

He glanced at Camilla.

"But you and I already have a name between us. Camilla has nothing."

He came closer.

"I hurt you because I love you and I wouldn't abandon you. I did it to protect Camilla."

I laughed, and it came out as a croak.

"You blinded me so she could keep her name?"

"I did what I had to," he said, "to protect the one who needed protecting."

Every word from his mouth went into my ears.

It hurt more than the night they were pierced.

"You wrote the Table's rule yourself," I said. "A wife can't be handed to another man's bed without her own word."

"I'll say it to the five bosses myself."

Damian smiled at me, almost fondly.

"The Table doesn't hear a woman who signed a letter forgiving her mother's killer," he said. "You'll find that out."

I stepped backward toward the study.

My phone was in there, in the top drawer of his desk.

Damian saw where I was looking and moved to block the hall.

"Don't," he said quietly. "I'm trying to be kind."

Camilla stepped out from behind him, her eyes wet and her chin up.

"Helena, don't make this ugly. We can all still be family."

"Family," I said.

"You killed my mother, Camilla, and then you sat at my table and held my hand."

Her face went blank, just for a breath.

Damian put a hand on her shoulder, and she did not answer.

It was the first time in three years that I had seen her afraid of me.

Then I heard the engine.

A car stopped hard outside the house, and two doors slammed.

Footsteps climbed the front steps fast and heavy.

The front door crashed open with a boot on it.

A bald, thick-necked man walked into the hallway.

It was Vernon Lowe, Damian's accountant, Camilla's father.

Behind him came a big young man with slack hands and a worried face.

That was Camilla's brother, who had been hurt before he was born and had never been allowed to forget it.

He kept his eyes on the floor.

He was twenty-four years old, and he held on to his father's sleeve.

Vernon looked at the milk, then at Camilla, then at me.

His gaze slid over my body slowly, and he smiled.

"So this is her?" he said.

"Not bad-looking."

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