After My Heart Died, The Don Begged Crying at My Feet novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cold Dinner
Anneliese finds her husband on her friend's party story, comments, walks into the club in front of his crew and leaves her ring in his glass, and he shouts that she takes the whole Coast with her.
Dominic's thirty-fifth birthday dinner went cold at ten o'clock.
I had started cooking at four in the afternoon.
Lamb shoulder with rosemary potatoes, two white candles, and a lemon cake I had baked at my shop before dawn.
At six, Gia texted me: "Dom is stuck at the docks with the captains. I'll make sure he eats something. Save me a slice!"
Gia was my friend. She had helped me choose the menu.
She said lamb was his favorite, and she would know, because she had sat through so many of his mother's Sunday dinners.
At eight, Dominic texted: "Running late. Don't wait up, amore."
I waited anyway.
At 10:40 my phone lit up with a video on Gia's story, and I was one of the people she had sent it to.
It showed a jazz club on the waterfront with the red lights turned low.
A trumpet was playing.
My husband stood in the middle of the floor in his dark suit, with one hand flat on Gia's back and her cheek against his jaw.
The caption read: "Closed the whole club for our favorite boss. Happy birthday, big man."
Behind them were tables of men I knew, captains and drivers and the boys who carried his coat.
One of them raised a glass to the camera.
I watched it twice.
Then I typed a comment: "Lovely party. Somebody should tell him his wife has dinner on the table."
I pressed send.
The video disappeared in a few seconds.
The phone rang before I put it down.
"Annie." Dominic was shouting, and the trumpet was still going behind him. "It was a joke. She posted it for a laugh. Take down what you wrote and don't do anything, do you hear me?"
"Happy birthday, Dominic," I said, and I hung up.
My chest went completely quiet.
It didn't break. A break I would have known.
I had loved that man for six years, and I felt it stop, and nothing came up to fill the space.
I blew out the candles.
Then I picked up the cake, took my keys off the hook, and drove to the Blue Anchor myself, the club on the Embarcadero.
The man at the door opened it before I reached it.
Inside, the music kept playing for four more bars.
Then the trumpet stopped.
Every man at every table stood up.
At the back, Fitz Doyle, who had been my father's right hand for thirty years, got to his feet and took off his cap.
He always stood when I came into a room.
My husband didn't stand. He was still holding Gia.
I walked across the floor with the cake in both hands.
"Annie, honey," Gia said, and she stepped away from him with her palms open. "It's his birthday. He's been so stressed. I only wanted him to have one good night."
"You chose the lamb," I said.
She blinked.
"You told me it was his favorite. I made it for six hours."
Her red mouth opened and closed.
I set the cake down on the piano.
"Anneliese," Dominic said. "Not here."
"Then where? You weren't home."
He took a step toward me, and I held up my left hand so he could see the ring on it.
I took it off.
It was tight, because I had never taken it off before, and I had to turn it twice.
I walked to the nearest table and dropped it into a glass of champagne that belonged to the man who had raised it to the camera.
He looked at the glass and didn't touch it.
"Make a wish," I told Dominic.
He went white.
"I'll send papers to the house on Monday. I'll sleep somewhere else tonight."
"Anneliese."
"Happy birthday."
I turned and walked back across the room, and the men stepped out of my way.
Gia called my name once.
I didn't answer her.
Fitz put his cap back on and fell in beside me without being asked, the way he used to walk beside my father.
I was almost at the door when my husband's voice cracked across the whole club.
"Anneliese Nolan! If you walk out that door, you take the whole Coast with you!"
I didn't know what he meant.
I kept walking.
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