He Canceled Our Wedding Ninety-Nine Times, So I Joined His Enemy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three Lashes

Renata takes three lashes on her old wound in front of the underbosses while Paola is named secretary. It ends with Tullio pressing a key card into her hand.

The conference room went silent.

The family's old rule gave three lashes in front of the table, and only after the fault was proven.

Nobody had ever been sentenced on a page that might have been altered.

I looked down the table for one person willing to ask for the proof.

Nobody met my eyes.

Two guards came up behind me.

I did not fight them, and I did not explain again.

They pushed me to my knees on the carpet, and Tullio, with his hands shaking, held out the whip.

Massimo took it from him.

He stood over me and looked down.

Then the first lash came across my back.

I flinched, and the flinch put the leather straight onto the old scar.

A sound tore out of my chest, and I clamped my teeth on the rest.

When I looked up, something like pain crossed his face.

He did not stop.

The second lash came down hard, and the third came harder.

The room went white and then dark at the edges.

I did not scream.

I counted the carpet fibers in front of my eyes until the last lash landed.

He handed the whip back to Tullio and stepped close.

"You're my secretary, Renata. You don't make errors like this, and you don't push your errors onto Paola. Think about what you did."

"Understood, Don Ruggieri," I said to the carpet.

My voice came out level, and it seemed to bother him more than a scream would have.

Then he turned to the nine men, and his voice went back to the one he used for the families.

"Gentlemen, I have a change to announce."

He held out his hand, and Paola walked to him on her little heels and tucked her arm through his.

"Renata has served as my chief secretary for five years. She has been adequate."

The word sat in the room.

"But today, I noticed something. Paola saw the missing zero in one look. There are twelve people at this table and not one of you caught it, Tullio included."

Several of the underbosses looked at their shoes.

"So Paola is better suited to the post than Renata. She starts tonight."

Nobody moved for a moment.

Then one of the men in the front row began to clap.

Another joined him.

"Sharp eyes, Don Ruggieri," someone said, and someone else added, "Miss Benvenuti is a find."

Paola leaned her head against his shoulder, smiling and shy.

Then her eyes slid across the room and landed on my face.

There was nothing shy in them.

It was a flat, steady look, there and gone.

The oldest man at the table, who had known my father, kept his hands in his lap and did not clap.

He caught my eye and shook his head once, slowly.

It was the only kindness in the room, and it cost him nothing, and I would remember it.

Massimo did not look at me again.

I stayed on my knees and thought, she is better suited.

She can have the desk.

She can have the keys and the ledgers and the nights he stays in town.

I had been right to go.

A guard offered me his arm.

I stood up without it.

My shirt stuck to my back in three long stripes, and every step felt like walking through glass.

I made it to the corridor.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

It was the airline: Your flight departs in ten hours.

I leaned against the wall and read it twice.

Footsteps came up behind me, heavy and uneven.

Tullio.

He had the whip's smell on him, leather and sweat, and his round glasses were crooked.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I should have stopped it. I'm sorry."

"You held out your hand because he told you to. I'd have done the same."

"No, you wouldn't." He gave a short laugh with no air in it. "You'd have broken the whip."

I almost smiled.

He looked up and down the corridor.

Then he pushed something small and flat into my palm.

A key card.

It was the kind that opened the records room in the basement.

"Don't use the car he assigned you tonight," he said quietly. "And don't go home. Ask yourself how Paola knew exactly which file you were carrying this morning."

"Tullio."

"I'm only saying what I saw. She was at your desk before you were."

His eyes went past my shoulder.

I turned.

Paola stood at the end of the corridor, holding two cups of coffee.

She smiled at me, kind and worried.

"Renata, are you okay? I got you the vanilla again."

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