The Mafia Bride They Rejected Became an Underboss novel · Chapter 8 of 16

Chapter 8: The Gate

I stood there on Lake Shore Drive with Boyd's laugh in my ears.

Carina had been nineteen.

She'd borrowed my car that summer for a road trip to the Grand Canyon.

She'd brought me back a turquoise bracelet from a gas station in New Mexico.

I'd worn it for a year.

"Put him somewhere quiet," I said to Rafael's men. "Keep him fed. Nobody touches him."

Boyd's grin slipped for the first time.

"What are you going to do with me?"

"I'm going to take you to dinner," I said.

I got back into the Escalade.

Tomás was sitting in the passenger seat with Hector's jacket around him, holding an ice pack to his lip.

"Did he say something bad?" he asked.

"He said something true."

"Is that worse?"

"Usually."

Rafael was waiting in the lobby of the Peninsula when we got back.

He'd been pacing. I could tell from the doorman's face.

He looked at Tomás first.

He knelt in front of him in the middle of the lobby, in his good suit.

He checked his lip and his knuckles and his eyes.

"You broke the window?"

"With my heel."

Rafael nodded slowly.

"Your father would have broken it with his head. You're smarter than him."

Tomás tried not to smile and failed.

The kids were upstairs, all seven of them, with two men at the door.

Luz had counted them a dozen times.

When Tomás walked in, she reached eight and burst into tears.

I didn't get them all to sleep until after midnight.

Rafael was on the balcony when I came out.

The lake was black. The city was all lit up behind us.

"Boyd's in a warehouse in Cicero," he said. "He's asked for a lawyer four times and a cheeseburger twice."

"Give him the cheeseburger."

"I did."

I leaned on the railing next to him.

"Carina picked the motel," I said.

"I heard."

"She was nineteen. She brought me a bracelet."

He didn't say anything.

He just put his hand over mine on the cold railing.

"Tell me again how you found me," I said. "I only remember the gate."

He was quiet for a while.

"My aunt called me at two in the morning," he said. "She said there was a white girl passed out at the gate with no shoes and her feet torn to pieces."

"She thought I was a junkie."

"She thought you were dead." He turned my hand over and ran his thumb along the scar on my palm. "You had a piece of whiskey bottle still in your fist. You wouldn't let go of it. Not even in your sleep."

"I don't remember that."

"I sat with you for three days. Tía Marisol made me."

"You never told me that."

"You woke up and asked if I was the one who took you." He smiled a little. "I said no. You didn't believe me for about a year."

"And then?"

"And then you started running the house. And then the books. And then the trucks." He shook his head. "Then one day Hector told me my own men were coming to you instead of me, and I figured I should make it official."

"Underboss."

"It was that or lose my job to you."

I laughed.

Then I stopped laughing.

"Why didn't you ever say anything?"

"Because the first time you saw me, you thought I was the man who'd hurt you." His voice went rough. "I wasn't going to be one more man who wanted something from you. So I waited."

"Eight years."

"You were worth it at one year. I just kept waiting."

I took his face in my hands and kissed him.

This time it wasn't careful.

It wasn't the garden, either, with my mother's house full of people behind the window.

There was nobody behind us now but the lake.

He made a low sound and hauled me up against him, and my feet left the balcony.

I wrapped my legs around his waist.

His hands spread under my thighs and held me.

The railing was cold at my back for one second, and then he turned us away from it.

"Vera." His mouth was on my neck. "Tell me what you want."

"You know what I want."

"I need to hear you say it." He lifted his head. His eyes were black in the city light. "I waited eight years. I can wait one more sentence."

"Take me inside, Rafael."

He walked us back through the balcony door.

I reached past his shoulder and pulled it shut myself.

The click was loud in the quiet suite.

Down the hall, behind three closed doors, eight kids were asleep.

Two of his men stood outside the front door.

None of that felt as close as his breathing.

He set me down on my feet at the bedroom door and didn't let go.

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