She Took My Wedding, So I Married the Don novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Terms

In Silvio's kitchen Claire stitches the knife cut in his shoulder while he lays out four terms for a one-year marriage. His uncle is waiting in the front room to see the bride.

Silvio's house was a narrow brick townhouse in Queen Village, with a red door and no name on the bell.

Bruno parked at the curb and came around to open my door.

"Watch the step, miss," he said.

It was the first thing the driver had ever said to me besides thank you.

Inside, Silvio walked straight through to the kitchen and took off his jacket.

The left shoulder of his white shirt was soaked dark red.

"You're bleeding," I said.

"It's nothing."

"It's through your shirt."

"A man at the docks had a box cutter and a disagreement with me this afternoon." He sat down at the kitchen table. "Bruno will tape it."

"Bruno will tape it, and in a week you'll have a fever and an infected shoulder." I put my coat over a chair. "I work in an emergency room. Where's your kit?"

"He won't go to a hospital," Bruno said from the doorway. "They write things down."

"Then I'll do it here."

Bruno looked at Silvio.

Silvio nodded once, and Bruno left and came back with a canvas bag that had clearly been opened many times.

Inside were sutures, lidocaine, saline and gauze.

I washed my hands at the sink for longer than I needed to, because my hands were the only part of me that wasn't shaking.

Then I cut the shirt away from his shoulder.

The cut ran four inches across the top of the shoulder blade, clean and deep.

There were older scars under it, a puckered one below the collarbone and a long pale line down the ribs.

"Hold still," I said. "This part stings."

I numbed the edges and he didn't move.

"Here are the terms," he said, while I worked.

"Now?"

"You'll want them before you decide anything else."

I set the first stitch.

"One year," he said. "I'm sworn in Sunday and I stay married for twelve months so no one can say it was a trick. After that you walk away with your name, your job and a letter from me saying your mother's note is paid."

I set the second stitch.

"You get your own room," he said. "It has a lock, and the lock is on your side of the door."

"Fine."

"I don't ask about your family. You don't ask about my business."

"Fine."

"And no one in your family is touched." He said it flatly, to the wall. "Not Shane Redford, not your sister, not your mother. Whatever happens to them, you decide it. I don't."

I put my free hand flat against his back to keep him steady while I pulled the thread through.

His skin was hot.

The muscle under my palm went tight, and he stopped in the middle of a breath.

I took my hand away.

He started breathing again.

It was the needle, I told myself.

Everybody goes rigid at the needle.

"You have steady hands," he said.

I didn't tell him that the rest of me was in pieces.

I tied off the sixth stitch and cut the thread.

"Keep it dry for two days," I said. "No lifting, and no more boxes at the docks."

"I'll see what the docks say."

I taped gauze over the line and sat back.

Under the kitchen light, I finally looked at his face.

He was younger than I had thought in the car, maybe thirty-four.

The scar through his eyebrow was an old one.

He was watching my hands instead of my face, and I realized he was giving me the courtesy of not staring.

He reached into his trouser pocket and set a small velvet box on the table.

"My grandmother's," he said. "You don't have to wear it tonight."

I opened it.

The ring was a plain old diamond in worn platinum, and the band was thin enough to have been a working woman's.

I put it on.

It fit.

I decided not to read anything into that.

My phone buzzed on the table.

It was my mother.

Wherever you are tonight, honey, you'll be fine. Get some sleep.

I read it twice.

An hour ago she had asked for my dress.

Now she was wishing me sleep, and she hadn't asked where I was.

Below it, Shane had written: Where are you? Please just call me. Tara's scared.

I turned the phone over.

"Your sister's name has been on that screen four times," Silvio said.

"Let her be scared."

He didn't answer that.

He stood up carefully, favoring the shoulder, and went to the doorway.

That was when Bruno came in, and his face was different.

"Boss," he said. "Your uncle's in the front room."

Silvio stopped moving.

"At midnight?"

"He says he heard you're getting married." Bruno looked at me. "He wants to see the bride."

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