I Left the Underboss for the Man Who Remembered Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Third Birthday
Gianna's dinner is packed away and her cake taken to Cesare's lover. She follows him to the anniversary party, puts her ring in the cake and walks out, and Ettore is waiting with a gift.
I turned twenty-three on the night my fiance carried my birthday cake out of our kitchen to give it to another woman.
It was the third birthday in a row Cesare had missed.
I hadn't said a word about the first two.
This year I cooked for three hours anyway, because the day was also the anniversary of the alliance between his family and mine.
My father, Alberto Orsini, had pledged me to Cesare the day I was born.
Every year both sides toasted the deal at a dinner.
This year Cesare had told me to skip it.
"It's long and it's dull, Gianna. Stay home and rest."
So I made my own dinner, bought a strawberry cake from the good bakery, and put a candle in it.
Then I went to shower.
When I came out, my lasagna was in plastic tubs in the fridge.
My cake sat on the counter with half its strawberries scraped off.
Cesare stood in the doorway in his black dinner suit, a fork still in his hand.
He didn't say happy birthday.
"Fiora was at the dinner for her father," he said. "Her stomach's bad and she hardly ate. I'm taking this over to her."
"That's my cake."
"It's a cake, Gianna. Buy another one tomorrow."
He picked up the box, kissed the air near my cheek, and said, "Don't wait up."
The door shut behind him.
I stood there in my towel and counted what was in front of me.
The tubs. The scraped cake. The candle he had pulled out and left on the counter.
I didn't cry.
I put on my good green dress, took the St. Anthony medal my mother left me, and called a car to the Marlowe Hotel.
The anniversary dinner was over, but the after-party was still going in the ballroom.
Both Families were there, two hundred people at round tables, and I walked in under the chandeliers in a dress nobody had asked me to wear.
A hostess with a seating chart found my name.
She frowned.
"Miss Orsini? You're at table nine."
Table nine was at the back, by the kitchen doors.
On the card in front of my chair, in gold script, it said: Orsini, guest.
Not Falcone.
I had worn Cesare's ring for six years.
"There must be a mistake," I said.
"I'm sorry. It came from Mr. Falcone's office."
Fiora Greco found me before I could ask which Mr. Falcone.
She came across the room with both hands out, in a cream silk dress, and hugged me.
"Gianna! I told Cesare it was your birthday. I told him twice. I'm so sorry, you know how he is."
She smelled like vanilla.
"Come sit with us, I'll fix the seating myself."
She squeezed my fingers, and I let her.
That was how smooth she was.
She walked me toward the head table, and I saw it before we got there.
My cake.
It sat on a silver stand in front of Cesare, with my candle stuck back in it crooked.
He picked up a strawberry in his fingers and fed it to Fiora, who was laughing.
Half the room saw it.
Cesare's father, Don Aurelio, saw it from his chair at the center and kept chewing.
My father's chair, two seats down, was empty.
He was in the hospital with his heart, and Cesare had told me not to bother him with it.
Nobody at that table looked at me.
Not one person.
Fiora's hand was still on my arm, soft and kind, and I took it off.
I walked up to the head table.
Cesare saw me and went still, the strawberry halfway to his mouth.
"Gianna. What are you doing here?"
"It's my birthday," I said. "You took my cake."
"Don't do this here."
"You said it was dull."
Two hundred people had stopped talking.
I slid my engagement ring off my finger, with its small old diamond from the Falcone vault.
I pressed it into the middle of the cake, deep in the whipped cream.
"Fiora's stomach is bad," I said. "Maybe this will settle it."
Somebody at the back of the room laughed and stopped.
Cesare pushed his chair back. "You're embarrassing both our Families."
"No," I said. "You did that. I'm leaving."
His face went hard.
"Walk out that door and you walk out of everything. Your father's alliance, the apartment, all of it."
I looked at the empty chair beside me, and at the card that said guest.
So I stepped out.
Nobody followed me.
The ballroom doors were heavy, and a man in a black coat was holding the right one open.
Ettore Bruni, my father's driver since before I could drive, and a captain on the Orsini docks now.
He had been standing at that door the whole time.
He looked at the ring-less hand I was holding against my chest.
Then he took a small paper-wrapped box out of his coat pocket and held it out.
"Happy birthday, Gianna," he said.
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