From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Five Terms

I wrote the terms on a prescription pad in the vestry, ten minutes before the ceremony.

Tancredi read them standing up, in the same black suit, with the organ already starting in the next room.

"One," I read aloud. "Six months. Then I leave with my name cleared and the money my father supposedly owed, paid back in my name, not the family's."

"Done."

"Two. Separate rooms."

"Done."

"Three. No touching in private."

His eyes lifted from the paper.

"In public we'll do what we have to," I said. "In private, your hands stay where I can see them."

"Done."

"Four. I keep my own scalpel."

"I'd be offended if you didn't."

"Five. I don't ask about the family's business, and you don't ask about why I'm good at guessing."

He was quiet a moment.

"That one I'll sign," he said. "I'm not sure about the first half."

"Then sign the second half."

He took my pen and signed the bottom of the page.

His handwriting was small and square, and his hand was perfectly steady.

Mine wasn't.

I had never worn white in my life.

The only dress Marta could find on the second floor, at seven in the morning, belonged to a bride who had left it in a locker three years earlier. It had long sleeves and a high neck, and it fit.

I did not want to think about that.

The Orsini chapel was small and old, with wooden pews and a marble saint with a chipped nose.

The whole family was in it.

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