I Bought His Love, Then He Became the Don novel · Chapter 13 of 76

Chapter 13: The Red Dress

Damiano didn't answer Vito.

He just looked at him until Vito's men started looking at the floor.

Then he put his hand on the small of my back and walked me out of the ballroom.

Nobody laughed this time.

People stepped out of our way.

In the car I sat as far from him as the back seat allowed.

The city went by in streaks of gold and red.

"You shouldn't have gone up there," he said.

"You shouldn't have brought me."

"She had no right to that photo."

"She had every right. It's true."

He turned his head.

"It's not true."

"I paid, Damiano. That's a bank record. It's on a screen in a hotel ballroom."

"You paid a hospital."

"So you'd stay."

"And I stayed."

"Because I paid."

He went very still.

"Is that what you think?"

"I know what I was to you," I said. "I'm not angry about it. I'm not stupid either. You were twenty and broke and your grandfather was dying. I'd have done the same thing."

"Would you."

"I did do the same thing. I bought what I wanted. You sold what you had to."

He laughed.

It was the worst sound I'd ever heard him make.

"Stop the car," he said to the driver.

We were on a side street near the river.

He got out without another word and shut the door.

The car pulled away.

I looked back through the rear window. He was standing under a streetlight with his hands in his pockets, getting smaller.

At the house the kitchen light was on.

Pasquale was at the table in a bathrobe, waiting up.

"Well?" he said.

"There's no engagement," I said.

He threw both hands up to the ceiling.

"Finally. That girl. Every Sunday she comes, she moves my salt."

He looked at me more closely.

"Where's my grandson?"

"He got out of the car."

Pasquale sighed.

"Donkey."

I sat down across from him.

My hands were still shaking. I wrapped them around the mug of chamomile he pushed at me.

"I tore the hem," I said. "Coming down the steps. My heel caught it."

"So fix it."

"My kit's in my room. The good needles aren't. I used the last one on Serena's dress."

"Damiano has needles."

"Damiano has needles?"

"Upstairs. His closet. The top shelf. There's a tin. He sews his own buttons. Too proud to let me."

I hesitated.

"I said I wouldn't go in his room. And he said he wouldn't go in mine."

"He's not in his room," Pasquale said. "He's walking around in the cold, being proud. Go. Top shelf."

Damiano's room was at the front of the house.

It was bare. A bed with a gray blanket, made tight. A drafting table by the window with a lamp clamped to it.

There were no drawings on it.

The closet door stuck. I had to pull hard.

Dark suits. Dark coats. White shirts in a row.

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