Dumped My Ex, Married the Mafia Don novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: One Suitcase
Josephine walks out of her divorce with $312, takes her diploma off her ex's wall and signs a mob boss's contract to mother his son, then the witness walks in: her ex-husband.
Whitman slid the pill bottle across the conference table.
"Don't forget these, Jo. You know how you get."
His mother laughed into her coffee.
The two associates at the end of the table stared at their legal pads.
The bottle rolled to a stop against my hand.
My name was on the label. His doctor's name was under it.
"Sign at the yellow flags," his father said. "Page four, page nine, page twelve."
I had read the settlement twice in the lobby.
It gave me nothing.
Not the house, not the car, not one dollar of the savings.
The prenup said so.
I had signed that prenup two days before our wedding, on a brand-new prescription, with Whitman holding the pen out to me and smiling.
"You'll leave with the suitcase you came with," he said. "That's more than fair."
"It's generous," his mother said.
"Keys to the Audi, please."
I put the keys on the table.
Then I signed at page four, page nine and page twelve.
My hand didn't shake.
Three years ago it would have.
Whitman reached across and took the papers back before the ink was dry.
"Good girl," he said.
One of the associates winced.
I stood up and walked out of the conference room.
"Jo? The exit's the other way."
I kept going down the hall to his corner office.
They all followed me. I heard his mother's heels on the marble.
His Yale Law diploma hung behind his desk.
Mine hung right beside it, in a matching frame.
He'd put it there the week we got married.
"Clients like seeing two Yale degrees," he used to say. "It looks like a power firm."
I lifted mine off its hook.
"That's office decor," Whitman said. "Put it back."
"It has my name on it."
"It's a piece of paper you never used."
"Because you told everyone I was too sick to use it."
The room went very quiet.
I opened my hand over his wastebasket and dropped the pill bottle in.
It hit the bottom with a little rattle.
"I'm sitting the bar in July," I said.
His mother actually laughed out loud.
"Darling, you couldn't sit through a dinner party."
Whitman smiled at me.
"You'll be back in a month," he said. "Crying in my lobby. I'll have security bring you a tissue."
I tucked the diploma under my arm and pushed the elevator button.
The doors opened on a war.
A man the size of a refrigerator was holding a tiny boy by the wrist.
The boy wore a navy suit with a clip-on tie and had black curls stuck to his forehead.
He bit the big man's thumb.
The man yelped and let go.
The boy shot out of the elevator and straight into my knees.
We both went down on the carpet.
"Tito!" the big man shouted.
The boy rolled off me and grabbed the corner of my diploma.
"What's that?"
"It's a very important paper," I said, still on the floor. "Only lawyers are allowed to carry it."
"Are you a lawyer?"
"Almost."
He looked at the frame. He looked at me.
"Can I carry it?"
"If you walk. Lawyers never run."
He considered this.
Then he took the frame in both hands, held it against his chest and walked very slowly back into the elevator.
The big man stared at me, sucking his thumb.
Someone else was standing at the back of the elevator.
Tall, black suit, white shirt open at the throat.
Ink climbed out of his collar and up the side of his neck.
He had been watching the whole thing.
He crouched, took the diploma gently from his son and read the name on it.
Then he looked up at me.
"Thank you, Ms. Kittering."
"Whitsett," I said. "As of ten minutes ago."
Something moved at the corner of his mouth.
He handed me my diploma. The doors closed.
The lit-up number climbed to the floor I'd just left.
That night I sat on a motel bed near the airport with $312 in my checking account and $89 of it already gone.
At ten o'clock someone knocked.
A woman in a leather jacket stood outside, with red lipstick and gold hoops the size of bracelets.
"I'm Paola," she said. "My brother wants to buy you dinner. He said you'd say no, so I'm supposed to say it's a job."
"Who's your brother?"
"The man whose kid bit a bodyguard today."
I should have closed the door.
I got my coat.
The restaurant on Federal Hill was closed. Every chair was up on the tables except two.
He stood when I came in.
"Valerio Ruggeri," he said.
I knew the name. Everyone in Providence knew the name.
Paola sat at the bar with her phone. A man by the kitchen door had a bandage across his knuckles.
Valerio didn't make small talk.
"My son's grandmother, Fiorella Gatti, is suing me for custody. She says a widower in my line of work can't give a four-year-old a home. The hearing is in June."
"And you need a wife by June."
"I need a mother in my house. Tito has thrown out six nannies. Today he walked next to you for forty feet without biting anyone."
He set a contract on the table.
One year. Marriage. Stepmother to Tito Ruggeri, at home and in court.
Two million dollars, fifty thousand of it tonight.
I read every line.
Then I took the pen from his jacket pocket without asking.
I wrote in the margin. A bar-prep course, paid. My own room, with a lock on the inside. Nobody touches me unless I say so.
"And I make the rules about his bedtime and his sugar," I said. "Not you."
He read my notes upside down.
"Yes," he said. "To all of it."
"You didn't even argue."
"You'd win."
I signed.
He signed under me.
"It needs a witness," he said. "My lawyer is on his way."
The front door opened.
Whitman walked in with his briefcase and stopped dead between the chairs.
His face went white, then red.
"Josephine?"
Valerio stood, buttoned his jacket and put a hand flat on the contract.
"Mr. Kittering," he said. "Meet my wife."
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