The Mafia Princess Engaged to Her Father's Enemy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Guest Room

In the Cortese compound Raffi tests every door and meets Bruna. Mariano visits under truce and hugs her, then tells her the seat is his if Vittorio never wakes.

The room they gave me had a lock on the outside and a bathtub big enough to drown a horse.

I noticed both before I took off my shoes.

The windows were old, with iron lattice on the outside that matched the garden fence.

The door was oak, three inches thick, and the hinges were on the hall side.

I tried the handle at three in the morning, and again at five, and again when the sun came up over Larkhill.

At seven there was a knock, and the door opened.

Bruna Cortese stood in the hall holding a tray, and she did not look in the least sorry.

"I bring tribute," she said. "Cornetti. Fresh. I made them at four because I can't sleep when my brother brings home women."

"I'm not a woman he brought home."

"No, you're a ceasefire. Eat."

I wanted to refuse on principle.

Then I smelled butter and orange peel, and my stomach made a sound that betrayed my entire family.

She sat on the end of the bed and watched me tear one open.

"You stood in the middle of two firing squads last night and told them to put their guns down."

"I was tired."

"You were incredible. Emanuele hasn't stopped scowling since. It's wonderful."

"Is he always like that?"

"He was nicer before our father died."

She picked a sugar crystal off her sleeve.

"Now he's one long funeral with a nice tailor."

I laughed, and then felt guilty for it, and then ate the second cornetto anyway.

At nine, two Cortese men drove me to the hospital in a car with locked doors.

They sat outside my father's room while I held his hand.

His fingers were warm, and the machine breathed for him with a small sound.

A Montalto guard stood on each side of the door, as agreed.

Mariano's coat hung over a chair in the corridor.

I stayed forty minutes, and then they drove me back to the beautiful cage.

The Cortese house sat at the top of Larkhill behind a stone wall.

It was old and handsome and too quiet, with a garden full of bare roses.

Every door in it opened if you were the right person.

I tried each one that afternoon.

The kitchen door.

The terrace door.

The door to the cellar, which had a guard sitting on the stairs reading a paperback.

"Evening, miss," he said.

It was three in the afternoon.

I closed the door gently and went on to the next.

Dinner was at eight in a long dining room under a painting of somebody's dead uncle.

Emanuele sat at the head of the table, and I sat at the foot.

Between us lay eleven feet of walnut and a pot of braised lamb.

We ate in silence for a minute.

"The room is acceptable?" he said.

"It has a nice lock."

"It's on the wrong side. I know."

"You could just say it. You could say, 'Raffaella, you're a prisoner.'"

"You're a guest."

"Guests can leave."

"Guests who are shot at can't."

He said it evenly, cutting his lamb into precise squares.

"You're angry," he said. "Good. Be angry at me. It's a useful place to put it."

"Is it? Is that what you do with yours?"

His knife stopped.

For a second the green eyes came up, and I saw something raw in them.

He put it away at once.

"Eat," he said. "Please."

While he refilled his water, I slid my steak knife into the napkin on my lap.

It was an ordinary serrated knife with a wooden handle.

I saw him see it.

He drank his water.

He didn't say one word, and my pulse hammered in my throat.

"Good night, Raffaella," he said when I stood.

I carried the knife up the stairs against my thigh.

The next day was a Sunday, and Mariano came.

He came through the front gate as a truce delegation of one, unarmed and alone.

The Cortese men searched him down to his socks.

He bore it with that wry look I'd loved all my life.

Then he saw me on the terrace and opened his arms.

"There she is."

I walked into them.

I smelled his cologne, the same cedar and bergamot he'd worn at my mother's funeral.

Something that had been clenched in me for two days finally let go.

"Are you all right? Did they hurt you? Tell me, and I'll burn this house down tonight."

"Nobody touched me. Bruna feeds me."

"Bruna." He glanced at the kitchen window. "Careful with all of them, little one. They smile with their teeth."

He held me at arm's length and studied my face.

Then he lowered his voice.

"Trust nothing in this house, Raffi. Not the food, not the doors, not the kind words."

"Write down what you see, and give it to me."

"Mariano."

"The doctors tell me your father isn't going to wake."

I couldn't breathe.

"They say he's too far under. Weeks, perhaps. Perhaps never."

He squeezed my shoulders.

"The council won't wait for weeks. If Vittorio never comes back, the chair is mine, little one."

He smiled at me with so much sorrow.

"I'll be gentle with it. I promise."

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