My Don Married My Pregnant Sister So I Choose His Mafia Rival novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Warehouse

I stopped turning.

He stopped with me.

The accordion kept going without us.

"Say that again," I said.

"No." His mouth was still at my ear. "You heard it. You're just deciding whether to throw me in the harbor."

"Since the cathedral."

"Since you walked down from that loft in your father's coat." He lifted his head and looked at me. "Before that, if you want the truth. Four years. A nor'easter. You brought a launch in with the rail under water, and I stood on the ferry terminal and forgot my own name."

"You never said a word."

"You were Cardone's daughter. Then you were Varrone's girl." His thumb moved between my shoulder blades. "Now you're my wife on a piece of paper, and I'm tired of the paper."

The whole pier was watching us.

I knew it.

The old man with his good glasses.

Assunta with her hands folded on the table.

The deckhand on his ladder with his mouth open.

I put my hand on the back of Ettore's neck and pulled his head down.

I kissed him under the lights in front of every family in New York.

It wasn't for them.

It was slow, and it went on, and somewhere in the middle of it the accordion player gave up and stopped.

When I let him go, the pier was silent.

Then one old longshoreman put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

The pier came apart in noise.

Over Ettore's shoulder, the old man from Howard Beach took off his glasses, folded them and put them in his breast pocket.

He raised his glass to me.

He didn't need to say anything.

Assunta came around the table and took my face in both her hands.

"Go home," she said. "I'll do the dishes."

"Nonna, it's our party."

"It's my party. I paid for it." She let go of me and pointed at Ettore. "Take her home before she thinks too much. She gets that from her father."

Ettore drove.

Neither of us said anything over the bridge.

His hand was on my knee.

Mine was on top of it.

On the Brooklyn side, at a red light, he looked at me.

"I can take you to your door," he said. "The one with the lock on the inside. I'll say goodnight in the hall like a gentleman."

"And then what?"

"Then I'll lie upstairs and listen to the pigeons and not sleep."

The light turned green.

He didn't move the car.

The driver behind us leaned on his horn.

"Clause four," I said.

"I know."

"I'm tearing it up."

His hand went still on my knee.

"Say it so I know I heard it right."

"I want you," I said. "Tonight. Your room, not mine. I don't want to be the one with the lock."

The driver behind us leaned on his horn again.

Ettore put his foot down so hard my head hit the seat.

At the warehouse he didn't turn on a light.

We went up the iron stairs in the dark, past my door on the second floor, past the deckhand's empty room, up to the third.

His room was under the roof.

There were books stacked against every wall and a big bed under the old loading-door window, the harbor silver behind the glass.

I'd never been in it.

I'd never let myself walk up that last flight.

He shut the door behind us and leaned on it.

He didn't come at me.

He just looked.

"Twenty-two buttons," he said.

"You'd better be faster than the zipper."

"I wasn't slow with the zipper," he said. "I was taking my time. There's a difference."

"Show me the difference."

He didn't move.

Neither did I.

The harbor light came through the loading-door window and laid a silver stripe across the floor between us.

"You first," I said. "Show me the difference."

He pushed off the door.

He crossed the room slow, the way he walks on a dock when he's deciding whether anyone's worth talking to.

He stopped close enough that I had to tip my head back.

His hand came up and took the top button between his thumb and forefinger.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"Being careful." The button slipped through the hole. "You said you wanted me tonight. In my room." The second button. "So I'm in no hurry to be anywhere else."

My breath went shallow before I gave it permission.

"Say it again," he said.

"Say what?"

"What you said in the car."

I put my hand over his, stopping him on the fourth button.

"I want you." My voice came out lower than I meant it to. "Tonight. I tore up the paper."

"Good." He bent his head and put his mouth just under my ear, not a kiss, just the heat of it. "Because I've been hard since the red light on Fourth Avenue."

I laughed.

I couldn't help it.

"Four years," I said. "And a red light does it."

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