He Replaced His Wife and Lost His Mafia Empire novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Lobby

Daniele arrives with his captains, offers the seat and the pearls in public and is refused; Cara leaves with Domenico on three terms and hears Daniele's order to force every counting house open at dawn.

I put the payment slip in my coat pocket before Paolo turned around.

He walked back from the doorway with his phone in his hand and a room key in the other.

"Eleven-twelve," he said. "The call took longer than I wanted. Who was that man?"

"A waiter," I said. "He wanted to know about the tea."

I don't know why I lied, except that I wanted a minute alone with what I had just read.

We were crossing the lobby toward the elevators when the revolving door turned again.

Daniele came in first.

He was still in the charcoal suit from the dinner, and four Greco captains walked in behind him, the same men who had sat at my table for five years.

The night manager stood up behind the front desk.

Two guests on a sofa lowered their newspapers.

"Cara," Daniele said.

He stopped ten feet from me, in the middle of the marble floor, where everyone could see him.

"I came to bring you home."

"I'm not going home," I said.

"You're upset. You have every right to be." He turned slightly so the room could hear. "I made an error tonight, and I'll say it here. I should have asked you."

I had waited five years for him to say that, and I noticed that he'd said it to the lobby.

He took a flat white box from inside his coat and opened it.

The long pearls lay on the velvet.

"These are yours," he said. "Your seat is yours. I'll have the portrait taken again tomorrow, with you in the middle."

One of the captains looked at his shoes.

Another looked at me, and I saw him wonder whether I would take it.

"Daniele," I said. "You put Genevieve in that chair five times."

"Once."

"Five times. You just changed her face every year. You wanted me to learn how small my place was."

"That isn't what I..."

"You told me so yourself, the second year. You said it would teach me to be quiet."

The night manager did not move.

The guests on the sofa had stopped pretending to read.

Daniele's jaw tightened, and he came across the marble and took my wrist.

He did not grip hard, but he did not ask.

My teacup was still in my other hand, from the bar.

I dropped it.

It broke on the marble and a shard opened my palm, and I felt the sting before I saw the blood.

"Let go of my sister," Paolo said.

He had come up on my other side, and I was relieved until I heard the rest.

"Let's all breathe. Daniele, you know how this goes. Cara has something you need."

"The books are mine," Daniele said. "She wrote them in my house."

"And she's the only one who can read them." Paolo's voice was warm and reasonable. "Give us what we've talked about, the port shares, and she'll write the cipher out for you tonight."

I turned my head and looked at my brother.

An hour ago he had asked me for that cipher across a table, and I had put him off until morning.

Now he was offering it across a floor, tonight, and I was not the one who had agreed.

"Paolo," I said.

"Trust me, Cari. Just stay quiet a minute."

Daniele's grip loosened for half a second, because he was thinking about the shares.

I pulled my wrist free and left a smear of my own blood on his cuff.

"No," I said, clearly, to everyone.

"I'm not a chair, and I'm not a bargain. And I'm not writing anything for either of you."

"Cara, don't be a child," Daniele said.

"I'm Cara Lombardi," I said. "I haven't used it in five years, but I'm using it tonight."

A man's coat sleeve brushed my shoulder.

"She'll come with me," Domenico Santangelo said.

He had come in behind my chair without a sound, and his two men were already standing between the captains and the elevators.

Daniele went very still.

"Santangelo."

"Greco."

Nobody had a gun out.

Everyone in that lobby knew exactly where the guns were.

"I don't need you to take me anywhere," I said to Domenico, low.

"No," he said. "But you need to be out of this room before he remembers what he owns."

I looked at Paolo, and he looked at the floor, and then he gave one small nod.

It did not look like surprise.

I didn't understand it, and I walked to the elevator beside Domenico anyway.

The doors closed on Daniele's face.

"Three rules," I said, and my voice was shaking only a little. "Before we go anywhere."

"Go on."

"One. I can leave whenever I want, and nobody stops me."

"Done."

"Two. You never ask me what's in the books unless I tell you myself."

His mouth moved.

"Done."

"Three. You don't touch me."

He looked at the blood running off my wrist onto the elevator floor.

"Then you'll have to bandage that yourself," he said.

His phone buzzed.

He read it, and his face changed.

He turned the screen toward me without a word.

It was a message from one of his people, a copy of an order that had gone out from Daniele's seal to every Greco captain at ten past one.

Open every counting house by force at dawn. Break the doors if the keys don't turn.

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