The Don's Wife Was Never Weak novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Above the Bakery

Talia tells her mother she's pregnant, and at 2 a.m. Renzo pounds on the bakery glass to tell her the piers are already in his name.

I took the phone out of Gianni's hand and got into the car.

I zoomed in on the photo until the faces broke into squares.

It was her.

It was him.

The Philadelphia son had his father's long chin and a gold watch he liked people to notice.

"When?" I asked.

"Last Thursday. A steakhouse in Atlantic City." Gianni pulled out of the lot. "She told me to wait in the car. I don't wait in the car."

"Did you show Renzo?"

"I tried. He said I was jealous on your behalf." His hands tightened on the wheel. "Then he told me to drive her home."

"So you quit."

"So I quit."

The Verrazzano lights went by on my right, one after another.

I didn't cry.

I took off my heels and held them in my lap.

"Where to?" he asked.

"Bay Ridge. My mother's."

He didn't need the address.

He had driven me there every Saturday for four years.

Conforti's Bakery was dark except for the case lights.

My mother lived in the three rooms upstairs, the same rooms I grew up in.

She opened the side door in her robe with a rolling pin in one hand.

She looked at my face.

She looked at my bare ring finger.

She looked at Gianni standing behind me on the step.

"Come in," she said. "Both of you. I made too much soup."

My mother always made too much soup.

She put me at the kitchen table where I'd done my homework.

She put a bowl of escarole and beans in front of me and a heel of bread beside it.

Gianni stood by the window until she pointed at a chair.

"Sit. You make me nervous."

He sat.

She sat across from me and folded her hands on the oilcloth.

"Tell me."

I told her about the chair.

I told her about the second table and the ring on the white cloth.

Her mouth went tight, but she let me finish.

"Good," she said.

"Good?"

"Your father would've stood up and clapped." She pushed the bread closer. "Eat. You're white as flour."

I reached into my clutch instead.

I laid the glossy square on the oilcloth between us.

She put on the reading glasses that hung from her chain.

She stared at it for a long time.

Then she took the glasses off and pressed her knuckles against her mouth.

"Talia."

"Eight weeks."

"Does he know?"

"No."

"Good," she said again, and this time her voice cracked.

She came around the table and pulled my head against her apron.

She smelled of anise and yeast.

Over her shoulder I saw Gianni looking down at his soup, giving us the room the only way he could.

"You'll stay here," my mother said into my hair. "Both of you. He sleeps on the couch."

"Ma, he doesn't have to..."

"I'm not asking him," she said. "I'm telling him."

Gianni nodded once, very seriously.

"Yes, Mrs. Conforti."

"Franca," she said. "You're sleeping on my couch. You can say Franca."

I almost laughed.

It came out like a hiccup and then I was crying after all.

My mother held on until it stopped.

Then she made me eat the whole bowl.

I slept in my old bed under the water stain shaped like Sicily.

At two in the morning, glass rattled downstairs.

Someone was pounding on the bakery door.

I came down in my mother's spare nightgown.

Gianni was already there in his shirtsleeves, standing to one side of the glass with his hand inside his coat.

Through the window, under the streetlight, stood my husband.

Renzo's tie was gone and his collar was open.

Behind him two of his soldiers waited by the car with their eyes on the street.

He saw me and stopped pounding.

"Open the door, Talia."

"No."

"Don't do this through glass."

"You did it in front of three hundred people," I said. "Glass is fine."

He put his palm flat on the window, the one with the old scar from our wedding.

"You embarrassed me tonight."

"You moved me to the second table."

"For one night. For business." He breathed out hard and fogged the glass. "Come home. We'll forget it."

"I'm not coming home."

"You don't have a home to come to without me."

My mother had come down behind me.

I felt her hand on the small of my back.

"I have this one," I said.

Renzo looked past me, at my mother, at Gianni.

His face changed when he saw Gianni.

"You," he said. "You're done in this city."

Gianni didn't answer.

He didn't take his hand off his coat.

Renzo turned back to me.

"You think you walked out with the piers," he said. "You didn't."

"My father's piers were never yours."

He smiled then.

It was the smile he used on men who owed him money.

"They are now," he said. "They've been in my name since last month. You signed them over yourself, sweetheart. Don't you remember?"

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend