Curvy Bride Claimed by the Mafia Don: He Made the Men Who Laughed at Her Kneel novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Lido Lounge

Silvio shows Deirdre the marker and refuses her money; Gail walks in and says pay it or lose the shop, and that Joyce already has the lease papers.

I got into the back of the Escalade because I wanted the rest of the paper.

Silvio Ranieri didn't say anything for the four blocks to Pacific Avenue.

He just watched me in the window, with his hand on the folder on the seat between us.

The Lido Lounge had dark wood and stained glass over the bar.

Men sat at round tables playing cards for money nobody counted out loud.

The bartender didn't ask what I wanted.

He just nodded toward a booth in the back.

Silvio sat across from me and opened the folder on the table.

"Braden Tully came in on the eleventh," he said. "He sat in that chair and signed for a hundred and eighty thousand in chips."

"Then he's the one who owes you."

"He's the one who owes me. You're the one who signed the second marker."

He slid a sheet across the wood.

Thirty-two thousand dollars, due on the same date, with my name at the bottom.

The loops were fat and slanted to the right.

It looked like someone who had practiced the name on a napkin.

"I've never been in this bar," I said. "I've never signed a thing in this city that wasn't a dress order."

"I know."

"Then how do you know?"

"Because you sat down like a woman who has never been asked to sign anything here," he said. "And because you don't gamble, Miss Keogh."

"Somebody who knows you does," he said.

I looked at the marker until the letters stopped looking like letters.

"Then take it from him."

"I'm not taking it from you."

"Good. Because I'm not paying it."

Silvio leaned back and rubbed the scar through his eyebrow with one finger.

"I don't take women's money," he said. "I take men's."

"Then why am I sitting here?"

"Because when Braden pays, I want him to do it in front of the same people who watched him sign your name."

He said it flat, not cruel.

Somewhere behind us a chair scraped, and a man laughed at the card table.

I thought about Joyce's face when the ring went into the glass.

"Who else knows about this?"

"Your aunt," Silvio said.

The office door at the end of the bar opened.

Gail Keogh came out with her reading glasses on a beaded chain and her cardigan buttoned one hole off.

She saw me in the booth and stopped walking.

Then she came the rest of the way and sat down beside me.

She sat close, the way she used to sit on the edge of my bed when I was nineteen and couldn't sleep.

"Deirdre," she said. "Listen to me."

"You knew about the marker."

"I knew Braden was in trouble. I knew Joyce would make it right if you were sensible."

"Sensible."

"Pay the man. Let the Tullys handle the rest of it, honey. It's only money."

"It's my name, Aunt Gail."

"It's our shop," she said. "And it's our lease."

Silvio didn't move, and he didn't look away from her.

He just listened.

Gail picked up a napkin from the table and folded it into a square.

Then she folded it again.

"Joyce came by the house on Sunday," she said. "She wanted to know how fast you'd crack."

"And what did you tell her?"

"I told her you'd crack in a week."

It was the coldest thing I had ever heard my aunt say out loud.

"You told her about my schedule," I said. "You told her about the fitting."

Gail set the folded napkin down and smoothed it flat with her palm.

"Joyce is taking the building, Deirdre," she said quietly.

"She can, and she's going to, unless we do what she wants," Gail said.

"She can't take a building because of a marker."

Gail looked at Silvio, and then back at me.

Her eyes were wet, and that scared me more than anything else in the bar.

"She doesn't need a marker," my aunt said. "Joyce already has the lease papers signed."

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