He Canceled Our Wedding Ninety-Nine Times, So I Joined His Enemy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Missing Zero

Massimo ties a tie she made for him around his mistress's neck, then a zero goes missing from the Delorme order. It ends when he orders family punishment.

I turned the screen face down against my chest.

"A compliance conference in Chicago," I said. "Tullio will cover my desk."

"For how long?"

"Long enough."

Massimo's jaw moved.

Behind him a door opened and Paola called out in a thin voice, "Massimo? My stomach hurts. I think I need to lie down."

He let go of my wrist and shoved past me, and my shoulder hit the doorframe hard.

It landed right on the old scar.

I grunted before I could stop it.

He turned back at once, and for a second his face was the face I used to know.

"Renata. Your shoulder."

Five years ago a man in a parking garage had put a gun on him.

I had stepped in front of it.

The bullet was still somewhere near my spine, too close to cut out.

He took a step toward me. "Is it the bullet? Let me see."

"Massimo!" Paola cried from the bedroom. "It really hurts."

He stopped.

He looked at me, and he looked at the door.

Then he went to her.

The door closed in my face.

I heard her whimper and his voice go low and gentle.

I stood in the hall with my hand over my shoulder until I was sure I wasn't going to say anything.

Then I took the ring off.

I set it on the hall table beside the key bowl, and I went upstairs to pack a bag.

The next morning the underbosses of the other families came for the quarterly meeting.

I led them down the corridor toward the conference room, nine men in dark coats who didn't like being kept waiting.

We passed the lounge.

Massimo stood in front of the long mirror with his head bowed, tying a necktie around Paola's neck.

I knew that tie.

I had ordered it from a tailor in Milan the year he took over, and I had paid for it from my own savings.

His initials were stitched inside the back panel.

There was not another one in the world.

The first morning he wore it he said, "I'll wear it until I die."

Now he was knotting it under another woman's chin.

Paola saw me and her face crumpled.

"Renata! He keeps making me learn this. I told him I'd rather not."

"Be good," Massimo said to her, and kissed the corner of her mouth. "If you don't learn, who ties mine?"

He did not look at me once.

I smiled at the underbosses, and every one of them found something to study on the carpet.

"This way, gentlemen. The conference room is right here."

I took my seat at the side table, opened my laptop and checked my flight again.

Massimo came up behind me.

He had a way of standing there that I could feel before I heard it.

"What's that?" he said, looking at the screen. "A plane ticket."

"I told you. Chicago."

He caught my left hand and turned it over.

His thumb went to the bare place at the base of my finger.

"Where's the ring?"

"At home."

"Renata." His voice dropped. "Don't tell me you left it at home."

For a moment he looked frightened.

I had never seen that on him in five years.

"Answer me."

Before I could, Paola screamed.

She stood at the head of the table with a folder open in her hands and her face white.

"There's a zero missing," she said. "On the Delorme ammunition order. If it ships like this, they'll sue us for breach."

Massimo crossed to her and took the folder.

I watched his face change as he read.

I had checked that order twice the day before.

I knew the number was right.

But the page in his hand showed a figure with a zero gone, and no erasure marked where it had been.

Paola pressed herself into his side and glanced at me with wet eyes.

"I think Renata handled this one. But she wouldn't make a mistake like that. Would she? She's the only one who touched it."

"Renata," Massimo said. "Explain."

"I checked it before I gave it up, and the number was right."

"Then someone changed it."

"Yes."

"Who would risk that? Who changes the family's books just to frame you?"

"I didn't say frame. I said it was right when I handed it over."

"Then who touched it after you?"

"Paola took it from my desk this morning," I said. "She said she would bring it to you."

Paola gasped.

Massimo threw the folder across the table and it skidded onto the floor.

"You make a mistake and then you blame her? When did you get so cruel?"

I looked at him.

He had decided before he finished reading.

He had decided before I opened my mouth.

"Tullio," Massimo said, turning to the man by the door. "Take her out and punish her. Family rules."

Tullio's face went gray. "Boss, we haven't found out who changed it."

"I said family rules."

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