He Chose His Pregnant Mistress. I Was the Bratva Princess. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: A Chair at the Table

Nika sits at the five families' table and gets seven days to make Tomasso release her.

The Commission met at noon in the back room of a restaurant on Taylor Street that belonged to nobody.

There was one long table, five chairs, and a wall of old photographs of men who were all dead.

My father walked me in on his arm.

Five families had a seat at that table, and no woman had ever sat in one.

I took the chair at my father's right hand anyway.

The room went still.

At the head of the table sat the chairman, an old man with a cane across his knees and a deeply creased face.

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Fyodor," he said. "Your daughter."

"My only child," my father said. "Veronika Sorokina."

Three of the men at the table drew a breath when he said the surname.

Across from me, Tomasso Greco said nothing.

He sat in a charcoal suit with his hands folded, and he only straightened his gold watch.

Bruno Pace sat behind his left shoulder with a folder on his knee and his eyes on the table.

Lev stood against the far wall with two of my father's men.

He looked at nothing.

"The Greco family brings a charge," the chairman said. "Tomasso. Speak."

Tomasso rose.

He did it beautifully.

He said he had brought a frightened woman home, a woman who was carrying his child.

He said a Bratva rifle had put a red light on her heart on his own front steps, while his wife stood by and smiled.

He said his wife had walked out of his gate and into the arms of the Bratva that same hour.

"My wife has been taken," he said, "and I ask this table's leave to bring her home."

He sat down.

The chairman turned his tired eyes to me.

"Madam," he said. "Do you want to answer?"

I stood up.

My knees were not steady, so I put one hand flat on the table.

"I wasn't taken," I said. "I walked."

"The law doesn't care how you went," the chairman said, not unkindly. "Only who holds you."

"Then let me say what happened on those steps, since your law only has one side of it."

Nobody stopped me.

"He brought his pregnant mistress home and told me to take the guest room," I said. "I put my mother's ring on her hand. The light was mine. My order, my ring. my father's men did what I told them and stopped when I told them to stop."

A man at the far end whistled very softly.

"When the light came on," I said, "my husband ordered me to my knees. On my own front steps, in front of the guards and the cook. He told me to kneel and call it off."

I looked at Tomasso.

"I didn't."

"She is a liar," Tomasso said, without raising his voice. "She is a Sorokin and she hid it from me for five years."

"Bruno Pace was on the steps," I said.

Every head turned.

Bruno looked up from the folder.

His face was grey, and he did not look at his Don.

"Counselor," the chairman said. "You were present."

"I was," Bruno said.

"Did the Don order his wife to kneel?"

For a moment I thought he wouldn't answer.

Tomasso turned his head and looked at him.

"Yes," Bruno said. "He did."

A murmur ran down the table.

The man beside the chairman, a heavy man from the north side, said, "A Don who orders his wife to the ground in front of his staff. That is not how a Don is supposed to behave."

"He was afraid for the child," Tomasso said evenly.

"He was afraid for the child," I said, "and not once afraid for me."

That landed, and I watched it land.

The chairman tapped his cane twice on the floor.

"The law is old, and I did not write it," he said. "A wife of one house, held by another, must be released by her husband's word. Without the husband's word she is held, and a held wife is grounds for war."

"I want to be released," I said.

"Then Tomasso must say so."

He looked at my husband.

"Don Greco. Do you release your wife?"

The room waited.

Tomasso looked at me, and his eyes were perfectly steady.

"Not today."

"Then you have seven days," the chairman said. He looked at both of us in turn. "Seven days to settle this between yourselves. On the eighth, if she is still held without release, I will give the Greco family leave to take its wife back by whatever means it likes."

My father's chair scraped.

"By force," my father said.

"By whatever means. Sit down, Fyodor."

He sat.

The meeting broke in a scraping of chairs.

I walked out through the kitchen with my father's hand on my elbow, and the cooks pretended not to see us.

At the back door Tomasso was waiting in the alley.

He had sent his driver away.

He stood with his hands in his coat pockets and watched me come out into the cold.

My father moved in front of me, and Lev moved in front of my father.

"Let me talk to my wife," Tomasso said.

"I'm not your wife," I said. "I'm waiting for you to say so."

He smiled a little.

"What do you want, Tomasso?"

"I want what I've always wanted." He looked at the bandage on my palm, and then up at my face. "I'll say the words the day you kneel on my front steps and ask me for it."

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