Bound by Honor novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Page Six
Bianca reads the marriage deal in her father's study, sets three terms and signs in front of both families; Silvio whispers that Dario's last fiancee is buried in Queens.
My father put the contract on the desk and said the choice was mine.
I was eighteen years old, and it was the first time anyone in that room had said so.
The study in our Oak Park house smelled of old leather and cigar smoke that nobody was allowed to light anymore.
A dozen people stood around the walls.
My father's men were on the left, in dark suits, hands folded.
The Castellane men from New York were on the right, and they looked at me.
Orazio Castellane sat in my father's guest chair with a cane across his knees.
He was sixty-one, with silver hair and a voice that filled a room without trying.
"Bianca, sweetheart," he said, "your father tells me you read everything."
"I do."
"Then read it. We are not in a hurry."
His son stood behind him by the window.
Dario Castellane was twenty-five, tall, with black hair tucked behind his ears and pale grey eyes.
He had not smiled once since he walked in.
He had not looked at me like a car, either.
He looked at me.
I sat down at my father's desk and pulled the pages toward me.
My father stayed standing at my shoulder.
"Nobody signs for you, Bee," he said quietly. "You hear me? If you say no, we shake hands and nothing breaks."
"Nothing breaks," Orazio agreed. "The peace holds. You lose the Brooklyn docks, we lose your Lakes route, we both live."
"And if I say yes?"
"Then you marry my son in three months, and the docks are shared."
I read the first page.
It was a fair split on paper.
The Castellanes would give us forty percent of the Red Hook dock contract.
We would give them the Great Lakes supply route my father's company had built over twenty years.
I turned to page two, and then three.
I know numbers the way some girls know songs.
I have kept the books of Roselli Provisions since I was fifteen, because my father trusted me to be bored by them.
On page four I found a line that was too small.
On page five I found another.
On page six I found nothing at all, only a signature block with two names and a blank line for mine.
"Your terms are missing," I said.
The room went still.
"Terms?" Orazio said, and he laughed, but only with his mouth.
"The deal has terms for the families," I said. "It has none for me. I would like three."
My father did not move.
"Go on," Dario said.
It was the first thing he had said.
His voice was low and level, and he was looking straight at me.
I held up one finger.
"First, I sign my own name. Not my father's, not yours, not a witness line."
"Fine," Dario said.
"Second, I stay on the books at Roselli Provisions. My name stays on the door in Chicago, and no one reassigns me."
"Fine."
"Third, when the docks are discussed, I am in the room. At the table, with a chair, not by the wall."
Orazio's smile thinned.
"Women do not sit at that table, sweetheart."
"They do if they are the ones who found the forty percent you hid on page four," I said.
Nobody breathed.
I slid the page across the desk and put my finger on the line.
"You wrote forty percent of the contract. But the contract is defined as 'net of harbor fees.' That is eleven percent less, every quarter, forever."
My father made a small sound that might have been a cough.
Orazio looked at the page.
He looked at his son.
And Dario, who had not smiled since he arrived, lowered his head and laughed once through his nose.
"She found it in four minutes," he said. "My father's lawyers missed it for a month."
"Dario," Orazio said.
"She gets the chair, Pop."
Orazio's hand tightened on his cane.
Then he spread his fingers wide and smiled.
"The chair," he said. "And the fee line comes out."
I looked at Dario.
I could still stand up, hand the pen back, and say no.
But I wanted the chair.
And I wanted to know why a man who looked like that was willing to give it to me without an argument.
I wrote my name in blue ink, slowly, so everyone could watch.
Bianca Marie Roselli.
The room let out its breath all at once.
Dario took the pen from my fingers when I was done, and for a moment his hand was warm against mine.
"Thank you for reading it," he said, very low.
It was the strangest thing anyone had ever said to me over a contract.
In the hall closet, I was reaching for my wrap when a voice spoke behind me.
"Congratulations."
Silvio Castellane was leaning on the door frame with a drink in one hand.
He was Dario's cousin, maybe thirty, with slicked black hair and a gold watch that caught the light.
I had noticed him in the study because he had watched me sign with the face of a man counting my teeth.
"Thank you," I said.
"You're smart. Smarter than the last one."
I stopped with my hand on the wrap.
"The last what?"
He lifted his glass as if to toast me.
"Dario's last fiancee signed too. Very happy. She's buried in Queens."
He drank, smiled, and walked away.
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