Bound to My Mafia Stepuncle novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Married
Riley's mother announces she's marrying mob boss Domenic Corso and has spent Riley's tuition on the wedding; Riley calls it theft at the engagement dinner and walks out, and Domenic follows her, coughing blood, to say someone wants him dead before the wedding.
My mother waited until I sat down with my cereal to tell me.
I had just come off a twelve-hour shift at the hospice.
I still had a dead man's lavender lotion on my hands.
She sat across from me at our tiny kitchen table, tapping her new pink nails on the rim of her coffee cup.
"I'm getting married," she said.
I put my spoon down.
"To who?"
"Domenic Corso."
My sister Corrine squealed from the doorway.
She probably had.
Everybody in Philadelphia knew that name.
It was painted on half the trucks at the port and on the funeral home on Passyunk.
"Mom. That's the Corsos."
"He's a businessman, Riley. And a gentleman." She held out her hand.
The ring had a stone the size of a cough drop.
"How long have you known him?"
"Six weeks."
"I'm maid of honor," Corrine said, sliding into the chair beside her. "Obviously."
"Obviously," I said.
Mom pointed her spoon at me.
"You'll do the favors and the seating chart. You're good with boring things."
"I work nights."
"Then you'll do it in the daytime. You don't sleep anyway."
I took out my phone to check my schedule.
The banking app was still open from Sunday.
Savings: $0.00.
I stared at it.
Four years of night shifts.
Fourteen thousand two hundred dollars for my last two semesters of nursing school.
One withdrawal, yesterday, at the branch on Allegheny Avenue.
"Mom. Where's my tuition money?"
She didn't even look up from her ring.
"It's a joint account, honey."
"It's my money."
"And now it's paying for the flowers." She sipped her coffee. "Domenic's people are used to a certain standard."
Corrine laughed into her yogurt.
"Don't be selfish, Ri. It's the first time you've ever been useful at a wedding."
"Dinner's at seven at his house," Mom said. "Wear the beige dress. And don't talk."
The Corso house was in Gladwyne, behind a stone wall and two men in overcoats.
It had a dining table long enough to land a plane on.
I sat at the far end, in beige, next to an empty chair.
Domenic Corso sat at the head.
He was tall and gone thin inside a good charcoal suit, with silver hair combed back and a white handkerchief folded in his hand.
He stood up when my mother walked in.
Nobody else at our house had ever stood up for anyone.
His brother Paulie took one look at Corrine and called her "sweetheart."
He called the waitress sweetheart too.
The youngest brother came in late.
"Angelo," Domenic said. "My baby brother."
Angelo didn't look like anybody's baby.
He was broad through the shoulders, black sleeves rolled to the elbow, knuckles scraped raw.
He took the empty chair beside me.
He didn't say hello.
He watched the table the way I watch a monitor at three in the morning.
Halfway through the veal, my mother tapped her glass with her knife.
"I just want to thank my girls," she said, glowing. "Corrine, my maid of honor, who planned every detail."
Corrine did a little wave.
"And Riley, who gave her whole college fund to this wedding."
Applause went around the table.
"She's always wanted to be part of something," Mom said.
Paulie leaned back and laughed.
"A girl who empties bedpans for a living gives up college for a party," he said. "Now that's love, sweetheart."
The whole table laughed with him.
Everyone except Angelo.
And Domenic, who was looking at me.
I set down my fork.
Then I stood up.
"I didn't give it," I said.
The laughter thinned out.
"She took it out of my account yesterday without asking me. Fourteen thousand two hundred dollars."
My mother's smile stayed on her face.
"Riley. Sit down."
"I want it back by Friday," I said. "Or I'm filing a police report."
Paulie whistled.
"In this house, sweetheart? Who do you think the cops call first?"
"Then I'll file it twice," I said.
Somebody's fork hit a plate.
I turned to the head of the table.
"I'm sorry about your dinner, Mr. Corso. Congratulations."
Then I walked out.
The gravel was loud under my flats.
My hands were shaking so hard I dropped my keys beside my car.
A big hand picked them up before I could.
Angelo.
"You just threatened to call the cops in my brother's dining room," he said.
"Was I supposed to ask permission?"
"Most people would."
"Most people weren't robbed by the bride."
The corner of his mouth moved.
It wasn't a smile, but it was thinking about one.
He didn't give me the keys.
He stood close enough that I could smell soap and cold air and something.
"Take some advice," he said quietly. "Get in this car and don't come back. People who stand too close to this family get hurt."
"Is that a threat?"
"It's the nicest thing anybody at that table is going to say to you."
He took my wrist and turned my hand over.
He laid the keys in my palm.
His thumb stayed on my pulse a second too long.
I knew he could feel it running.
"Angelo."
Domenic was standing on the front steps.
"Go inside. Keep Paulie away from the wine."
Angelo looked at me one more time and went.
Domenic came down the steps slowly, one hand on the rail.
"Donna is going to be very angry with you," he said.
"She's always angry with me. Tonight she just has a reason."
He started to laugh.
The laugh turned into a cough.
He bent over the handkerchief, and the cough went on too long and too wet.
When he straightened up, there was bright red on the white linen.
The porch light caught his face.
The whites of his eyes were yellow.
I had sat with a hundred dying people.
I knew that yellow.
"How long?" I asked.
He folded the handkerchief over the blood, neat as a napkin.
"The doctors say weeks."
"Does my mother know?"
"Nobody knows. Not my brothers. Not your mother." He looked at me. "You figured it out over one plate of veal."
"Then why are you getting married?"
"Because I'm lonely, and your mother laughs at my jokes." He shrugged. "And because I need a wife in that house when I go."
Behind him, through the dining room window, Paulie was pouring Corrine more wine.
His other hand was on the back of her chair.
"I need a night nurse," Domenic said. "One who doesn't belong to anybody at that table."
"I'm not a nurse yet."
"Then I'll pay for that too."
"Why me?"
He looked back at the lit window for a long moment.
"Because my pain pills stopped working two weeks ago," he said. "And somebody in that house is trying to make sure I die before the wedding."
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