The Don Chose His Mistress, So I Chose His Enemy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Generous Husband

Renato tells the city on television that his wife left sick and ashamed; Giulia breaks a glass, Declan bandages her hand, and her father calls to tell her to be gracious.

Renato went on television at noon.

Maeve had the little set in the kitchen tuned to a Chicago station, because she said you should always watch the other side's best day.

He stood on the steps of the Calumet club in a black suit with a white carnation, and about forty reporters stood below him.

Behind him, in two neat rows, were the men who had watched me sign.

"My wife and I have ended our marriage with respect," Renato said. "Giulia has been unwell since the loss of our son."

I put down my spoon.

"She has asked for privacy and gone to a place where she can rest. I won't say more, because I would never shame the mother of my first child."

"His first child," Maeve said. "Listen to him. He's already counting the one she lost out of the list."

"Quiet," Declan said, not unkindly.

A reporter shouted a question about a rumor that Brandolini men were unhappy.

Renato smiled.

"The Brandolini family is my family," he said. "My father-in-law stands beside me. He gave me his daughter and his house, and I have only ever been grateful."

He had said it so smoothly that the reporters wrote it down.

"He stands beside me," I said out loud.

Nobody in the kitchen answered.

"My father hasn't called me once. And Renato says he stands beside him on television."

"You can still call him," Declan said.

"I'm not going to call a man who sent me a message through a lawyer's folder."

I picked up my water glass to drink, and my hand closed on it harder than I meant.

It broke.

A wedge of glass opened across the base of my thumb, and blood ran down my wrist and onto Maeve's clean tablecloth.

"Oh, for God's sake," Maeve said, and she was already half out of her chair. "Don't move it. Declan, the kit under the sink. I have to take a call from the hospital, my supervisor's been trying me since eight."

She went out to the hall with her phone to her ear.

Declan came back with a white tin box.

He set it on the table between us and stood there with it, not opening it.

"Terms," he said. "I don't touch you unless you start it."

"I know the terms. I heard them at thirty thousand feet."

"Your hand is bleeding on my sister's tablecloth."

"Then wrap it," I said, and held it out.

He sat down in the chair beside mine and took my wrist in his palm.

His hand was dry and warm, and the knuckles were scarred in a way I would have called ugly on any other man.

He picked a small piece of glass from the cut with tweezers and did not make a sound or ask if it hurt.

I watched his face while he worked, because the alternative was watching the television.

There was a crease between his eyebrows, over the split, and he was breathing slowly through his nose.

When he pressed the gauze to my thumb his own thumb moved along the inside of my wrist and stopped on my pulse.

It stopped there for as long as it took me to notice.

Then he wound the bandage around my palm three times and tied it.

"You're quick," I said.

"Maeve's trained me."

"That was not what I meant."

"I know what you meant." He put the tweezers in the tin and closed the lid. "Your pulse is fast."

"I've been poisoned by a television."

"Yes," he said. "That must be it."

He stood and took the broken glass to the sink in his bare hands.

I looked at the bandage and tried to decide whether I had been touched or only treated.

On the television Renato was shaking hands with a priest.

My phone rang on the counter.

I turned it over, and the name on the screen was Papa.

I had a stitch of fear in my chest before I even answered.

"Giulia."

"Papa."

His voice was the one he used for the parish council, patient and low.

"Where are you?"

"Somewhere safe."

"With him," he said. "The Irishman."

"How do you know that?"

"I know where everyone is." He coughed once. "Listen to me. I'm an old man and I'll say it once. Renato has done this badly, and he'll make it right. But you will not make things worse."

"Papa, he made me sign."

"You signed," my father said. "Good. That was dignified."

I held the phone away from my ear and looked at it.

"Be gracious," he went on. "Paola is a good girl and the baby is a Falzone. There is no point making an enemy of the mother. Come home before Sunday and stand next to me at Mass."

"Did you ask Renato to do it?"

"Come home, Giulia."

"Papa, did you know?"

The line was quiet long enough that I heard the ice machine in his kitchen.

"Sunday," he said, and hung up.

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