From the Don's Son's Plus-Size Girl to His Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Helipad
Meghan rides to the Caravello roof 105 pounds lighter and finds the heir kissing his fiancee; he laughs that the number was never his, she slaps him and walks out, and the elevator opens on his brother holding the phone that just got her text.
I lost a hundred and five pounds for Tiziano Caravello.
When I stepped out onto his roof to finally hear him say it, he was kissing somebody else.
The elevator had let me out on the fortieth floor.
A security guard had looked at my name on his tablet and pointed me up one more flight of metal stairs.
"He's expecting you?"
"He told me nine," I said.
The guard shrugged like that meant nothing.
I climbed the stairs in heels I'd practiced in for a week.
The red dress was the first thing I'd ever bought off the regular rack.
Size sixteen.
A year ago I was a twenty-six, and I wore my father's old flannel shirts to work so nobody could see the shape of me.
I pushed the door open and the wind off the river hit me in the face.
The helipad was a big lit circle with a black helicopter sitting in the middle of it.
Tiziano had flown it since he was twenty.
The whole neighborhood knew the sound of it going over Taylor Street.
He was standing beside it in a navy suit.
A blonde woman in a white coat had her hands inside his jacket.
He had his hand in her hair, and his mouth on hers, and he wasn't in any hurry.
I knew her.
Everybody knew her.
Cristina Scalise had four hundred thousand followers and a ring on her finger the size of a sugar cube.
Their families had announced the engagement in June.
I'd told myself it was arranged.
I'd told myself he'd hated it.
He'd told me he hated it.
Every night for a year, he'd told me things.
Cristina saw me first.
She pulled back and wiped her lipstick off his mouth with her thumb.
"Babe. You have a visitor."
Tiziano turned around.
He looked at me for a long second.
"Can I help you?"
My mouth was dry.
"It's me," I said. "Meghan."
Nothing.
"Meghan Fennelly. From the deli."
Then it landed, and I watched it land.
His eyebrows went up.
He looked me down and back up, slow.
Then he laughed.
"No way. The deli girl?" He turned to Cristina. "That's the deli girl. Fennelly's. The big one."
Cristina put her hand over her mouth.
"Oh my God. The napkin."
"What are you doing on my roof, sweetheart?"
I held up my phone with my thumb shaking.
The last message was right there on the screen, under a year of other ones.
Come to the helipad Friday at nine. I'll tell you everything.
"You asked me to come," I said.
Tiziano leaned in and read it.
Then he laughed so hard he had to put his hand on the helicopter.
"That's not my number."
"It's the number you gave me."
"Sure. On a napkin. At my birthday. Because she bet me fifty bucks you'd actually use it." He wiped his eye. "I tossed that phone the next morning."
The wind pulled at my hair.
"You've been texting me back for a year."
"Not me." He grinned. "I don't text anybody back for a year."
Cristina had her phone up now.
The little red dot was on.
"Say hi, deli girl," she said.
I thought about the walk-in cooler at five in the morning.
The lake path in February with my lungs on fire.
My mother's cannoli on the counter every single night, and me saying no.
I had told him all of it.
I had told somebody all of it.
"You lost what, eighty pounds?" Tiziano said. "Good for you, honestly. You look great. You should've done it years ago."
I walked up to him.
He was still smiling when I slapped him.
The crack of it was louder than the wind.
His head went sideways.
Cristina squealed and kept filming.
I opened my purse and took out the black box.
Gold cufflinks with his initials on them.
Four months of tips.
I threw the box past him, over the edge of the pad.
It bounced once in the safety net and stuck there, forty floors over the river.
"Happy birthday," I said.
Then I turned around and walked back to the stairs.
My legs didn't shake until the door closed behind me.
I went down the metal stairs and across the fortieth floor and pressed the elevator button four times.
His name was still at the top of my messages.
Tiziano.
I didn't know what else to call it.
I typed with my thumb and sent it anyway.
"I'm here. Who is this?"
The elevator chimed.
The doors slid open.
There was one man inside.
Big, in a black wool coat, with short dark hair and a white scar running up out of his collar.
Killian Caravello.
The adopted one.
The brother nobody talked to at parties, who stood by the wall and watched the doors.
He had a phone in his hand.
As I looked at it, the screen lit up.
I could read it from where I stood.
I'm here. Who is this?
Above it, in small letters, his phone had my name.
Meghan.
He looked at the screen.
Then he looked at me.
"It was me," he said.
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