Too Late. I'm Married to the Godfather novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Two Men

Whitney's mouth stayed open.

Nothing came out of it.

"I never said how many," I said. "I never told anyone how many. So how do you know there were two?"

"You..." She looked around at the phones. "Everybody knows. It was in the police report."

"The police report is sealed. I'm the only one who's ever read it."

"Then you told someone! You told Grayson!" She whirled on him. "Tell them, Gray. Tell them she told you."

Grayson was still on one knee.

He got up slowly. He brushed off his trousers. He looked at Whitney.

"She never told me anything," he said. "I'm hearing this for the first time. Right now. With everybody else."

I looked at him.

It was true. I had never told him. I had walked off that roof and never answered another one of his calls.

The room believed him. I could see it happen, face by face.

"Carly." He took a step toward me. His voice was shaking. "What happened to you that night?"

"Not now, Grayson."

"Somebody hurt you? After you left here?" He turned back to Whitney, and his face went hard. "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything! I don't know anything! I just heard!"

"Heard from who?" said the woman in the pink dress.

Whitney looked at her.

She looked at the forty phones.

She dropped the ring light on its stick. It hit the floor and the bulb popped.

Then she ran.

She shoved past the DJ and out through the kitchen door at the back, and the swinging door slapped twice behind her.

Nobody followed her.

Grayson stood beside me in the wreck of the party.

"Carly, I swear to God, if she had anything to do with..."

"Go home, Grayson."

"Let me take you home."

"My husband is downstairs."

He flinched.

I walked to the elevator alone.

When the doors closed I put both hands flat against the brass wall and breathed for twelve floors.

Level three went by on the panel.

I made myself look at it this time.

Giancarlo was standing on the sidewalk next to the car, not in it.

His phone was in his hand. Whitney's livestream was frozen on the screen, on my face.

He'd watched all of it.

He didn't say a word. He opened the back door for me, got in after me and told the driver, "Home."

Then he took my hand.

His was ice cold, and his grip was so tight it hurt.

I looked down. His other hand was wrapped around the door handle, the knuckles white.

"Giancarlo."

"I'm keeping it," he said, staring straight ahead. "The promise. I'm keeping it."

"I know."

"I want you to see me keeping it."

"I see you."

He let out a breath that shook.

"She paid two men to put their hands on you," he said. "And she's going to sleep in a bed tonight."

"She's going to sleep in a bed in an apartment her father pays for, after he walked out on her birthday in front of everyone she knows. And tomorrow she wakes up to that video."

"It's not enough."

"It's not finished."

He turned his head and looked at me then.

"Okay," he said. "Not finished."

My phone buzzed on the seat between us.

A text, from a number I knew.

It was the chief.

"Saw the footage. Review closed. You're cleared. Please come in Thursday. I'm sorry."

I held it up so Giancarlo could see.

He read it twice. Then he laughed, short and surprised.

"You did that," he said. "You. Not me."

"I did that."

"In both shoes."

"In both shoes."

He took my face in his hand and kissed me in the back of the car, hard, like he'd been holding his breath since nine o'clock.

I kissed him back until the driver turned the radio up.

At the brownstone, the house was dark. Nonna's door was shut. Rocco was asleep in his dinosaur pajamas, sideways across his bed, with Steve under one arm.

I fixed his blanket.

Giancarlo stood in the doorway behind me.

When I turned around he hadn't moved, and he was looking at me like he didn't know what to do with his hands.

So I took them.

I walked him backward down the hall into our room and shut the door.

"Carly," he said, his voice rough.

"Get in here," I said, and pulled his shirt out of his trousers.

I shoved his shirt up over his head and threw it on the floor.

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