Regrets of the Don: His Beloved Walked Away novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Anniversary

At the anniversary dinner in front of his family, Lili gives Cesare a key to nothing, tells him she heard every word, and walks out through a gate that locks on her own code.

I looked at the gray bean on my screen until the light went off.

I didn't answer her.

I opened the front door and walked down the drive to my van.

The gate opened on the code I'd just set.

It closed behind me with the soft clunk I'd tuned myself, three years ago, so it wouldn't wake him.

I drove to 18th Avenue and parked in front of my grandfather's shop.

The steel shutter was down. I didn't have it in me to lift it.

I slept in the back of the van with my head on a coil of cable.

At six my phone was buzzing on the floor.

Thirty-one missed calls.

He'd gone up to bed and found the diamond on his pillow.

Then the texts started.

"Where are you."

"Lili, answer me."

"Are you hurt? Just tell me if you're hurt."

I typed one line.

"No. I'll be at Nonna's dinner at seven. I promised her."

The dots came and went for a long time.

"Lili, what happened?"

I turned the phone face down.

At seven-twenty a black Lincoln rolled slowly down 18th Avenue.

It went past the shop, stopped at the corner and stayed there.

Two of his men sat in it with the engine running.

He'd found me in four hours. That was what he did for a living.

Nobody got out.

At five past seven that evening I walked back through his gate in a black dress and my work boots.

The dining room smelled of veal and candle wax.

His mother had set the long table with the good plates.

Nonna sat at the head in her pearls, eighty-six years old and sharp as a tack.

Connie was pouring wine.

The underboss stood by the window with his hands folded.

He couldn't look at me.

Cesare stood when I came in.

He'd shaved, and his eyes were red.

He came around the table and stopped one step away from me.

"Where did you sleep?" he asked, very quietly.

"In my van."

His jaw moved.

"Sit down, both of you," Nonna said. "The food is getting old and so am I."

We sat.

He pulled my chair out like he always did.

I let him, because his grandmother was watching.

Halfway through the antipasto, the intercom buzzed.

The security man came to the door of the dining room.

"Miss Valentina's at the gate, Don Lanza. Her code doesn't work."

Cesare looked at me.

I ate an olive.

"Your mother invited her," Connie said into her glass. "Not me."

His mother lifted her hands. "She's Lili's sister. It's an anniversary. It's family."

Valentina came in five minutes later in a cream knit dress.

She had one hand on her flat stomach.

She glowed.

"Something's wrong with your gate," she said, and kissed his mother on both cheeks.

Then she kissed me.

"Happy anniversary, Lili."

She smelled like my perfume.

She sat across from Cesare and smiled at him.

He didn't smile back.

He didn't look at her once.

When the veal came out, his mother tapped her glass.

"Three years," she said. "I said it wouldn't last a month. I was wrong, and I'm happy to be wrong."

Everybody laughed except me and Cesare.

"Lili," Nonna said. "You always have a present. Where's the present?"

I took a small velvet box out of my bag and set it in front of my husband.

He opened it.

Inside was a single brass key, freshly cut, the edges still bright.

He held it up to the light.

"What does it open?"

"Nothing," I said. "I cut it this morning. It doesn't fit any door you own."

Connie put her fork down.

Cesare turned the key over in his fingers.

He didn't understand.

He was the smartest man I'd ever met, and he didn't understand.

"I finished in Philadelphia a day early," I said. "I was home last night, at eleven."

The underboss's chair creaked.

"I was outside the study door."

Nobody at that table moved.

Valentina's hand slid over her stomach.

I watched the blood leave Cesare's face.

"I heard every word," I said.

Nonna looked from me to Valentina and back.

She was eighty-six, and nobody had ever needed to draw her a map.

I stood up.

I put my napkin on my plate.

"Thank you for dinner," I said to his mother. "It was beautiful. I'm sorry."

I walked out of the dining room.

Behind me Connie said, "What did you do?"

Then a chair scraped, and I heard his steps in the hall.

He caught up with me at the gate.

Two of his men stood by the posts.

He lifted two fingers without looking at them, and they walked away into the dark.

The street lamp turned the gravel orange.

He didn't touch me.

He stood so close I could smell his cologne and the wine on his breath.

"Lili. Listen to me."

"I listened last night."

"It meant nothing," he said. "It was one night. It meant nothing."

He still had the brass key in his fist.

"Then neither did I," I said.

I punched my code into the keypad.

The gate swung open.

I walked through, and it closed behind me between us.

The lock caught with a click I'd set myself.

On his side, Cesare Lanza put his palm flat on the iron.

The security man could have buzzed it open from the house in one second.

He didn't call for it.

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