I Bought His Love, Then He Became the Don novel · Chapter 3 of 76

Chapter 3: Warranty

Lucia writes the rules of the deal, buys her boyfriend's shifts away from him and shows him off at a party as something with a warranty, until he says stop and walks out.

"A loan," I said. "To a friend."

Serena looked at the memo line.

PASQUALE SANTANGELO.

"Damiano's grandfather?" she said softly. "Luce, that's so generous."

She put my confirmation on the desk and squared it with her fingertips.

Her phone went face down beside it.

"I won't tell a soul," she said, and hugged me.

I let her.

It never crossed my mind to wonder why she'd been holding her phone.

That Friday night I gave Damiano the rules.

I did it in my dorm room, with my laptop open on the desk and him on the edge of my bed in the camel coat.

He hadn't taken it off since Michigan Avenue.

"I typed it up," I said. "Listen."

"One. A year, to the day, starting Tuesday."

"Two. When I call, you answer."

"Three. When I say come, you come, and you wear what I buy."

"Four. In front of people, you're mine, and you act like it."

"Five. Nothing that isn't in the deal."

"Six. Nobody finds out what it cost."

I looked up.

He had listened to all of it with his eyes on the carpet.

"Can I add some?" he said.

"You can't add anything, you didn't pay."

He waited.

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. Two."

"I keep my shifts and I keep my classes."

"Granted."

"And if I say stop, you stop."

"Stop what?"

"Whatever it is."

It was such a strange thing to ask for that I laughed.

"Fine," I said. "Stop is in the deal."

I typed it in as number seven.

He read it over my shoulder, and for a moment his hand rested on the back of my chair.

I didn't think about it again.

Rule two meant he had to be free whenever I called.

He waited tables five nights a week.

So on Monday I fixed it.

I called the manager at his restaurant and told him I was a friend of Damiano's who needed him on some evenings.

I offered five hundred dollars for the inconvenience.

The manager said that wouldn't be a problem.

On Wednesday, Damiano found his name gone from the Friday and Saturday lines on the schedule board.

Friday and Saturday were the nights with the tips.

He came up to the studio at midnight and stood next to my desk by the window.

"Did you call my boss?"

"I made you available."

"I pay my rent with those shifts."

"I'll pay your rent."

"No."

I stared at him.

"I work for what I have, Lucia," he said. He said it quietly, in front of the whole empty floor. "I took Nonno's surgery because I had no choice. I'm not taking this."

"You work for me now."

He looked at me for a long time.

"No," he said. "You paid for a valve. You didn't buy my Saturdays."

I turned back to my sketch.

By Friday his name was back on the board, and I never found out how.

On Saturday I called him in the middle of his shift to see if he'd answer.

He did.

Friday of the second week was the floor party in the third-floor lounge.

I wore the green velvet I'd made in August.

I walked in with Damiano's arm in mine and stopped in the middle of the room so everyone could see.

"This is Damiano," I said. "He came with a warranty."

The room laughed.

Damiano smiled, because rule four said to.

I handed him my empty glass.

"Ice."

He went to the kitchen and came back with ice.

"My coat's on the bed," I said, ten minutes later. "Get it, I'm cold."

He got it.

An hour in, a girl in a gray sweater leaned toward her friend, and I heard every word.

"Is it true? Did she actually pay for him?"

The lounge got very quiet.

I could have laughed.

I could have said nothing.

I took two hundred dollars out of my clutch and walked across the room.

I tucked the bills into the pocket of her sweater, in front of everyone.

"For your discretion," I said. "Buy yourself a better mouth."

Somebody whooped.

Serena laughed so hard she had to sit on the arm of the couch.

The girl in the gray sweater went red to her ears and looked at the floor.

Damiano set the ice bucket down on the coffee table.

He looked at me.

"Stop," he said.

"What?"

"I said stop. It's in the deal."

I laughed again.

He didn't.

He took off the camel coat and folded it over the arm of the couch.

He walked out of the lounge in his thin green jacket with the broken zipper.

Nobody said anything.

"Let him go, Luce," Serena said, touching my arm. "They always come back."

I told myself she was right.

For nine days he didn't answer the phone I'd bought him.

On the tenth day I found out the date from the schedule I had paid to be on.

It was the second Friday in November.

I came straight from the studio with a blanket from my dorm bed over my arm.

The seventh-floor waiting room had a TV bolted to the wall.

Damiano was standing at the window with graphite up to his wrist and a final model due in two days.

He looked at me.

He didn't say anything about the party.

"The surgery's six hours," he said.

"I know."

"You didn't have to come."

"I paid for it," I said. "I'm coming."

He almost smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.

He didn't sit for the first three hours.

At two in the morning he finally sat down in the chair under the TV.

At two-thirty he fell asleep sitting up, with his head tipped back against the wall.

I stood there looking at him.

I'd never seen his face with nothing on it.

I took off my coat, a long wool one, and laid it over him.

It covered him to the knees.

I sat down in the next chair and didn't sleep.

At four the surgeon came out and said the valve was in, and his grandfather was strong, and we could see him in an hour.

Damiano stood up so fast my coat hit the floor.

He grabbed me.

He held on to me in the middle of the waiting room with his face in my hair.

He was shaking all over.

"I'm going to pay you back," he said into my hair. "Every cent. I swear to God, Lucia."

I thought he was telling me what I was to him.

A debt.

"Don't," I said, and patted his back. "That's not the deal."

He let go of me.

I thought it was relief.

At seven the surgeon came out again, and I wrote her a check for ten thousand dollars on the hallway wall.

"For the extra care," I said.

She looked at it.

She handed it back and walked away.

I stood in the corridor holding it, and I didn't understand what I had done wrong.

Damiano didn't thank me again.

In February, he said something that wasn't in the deal.

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