I Married the Mafia Heir to Bury My Secret novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Envelope
At her wedding reception Mara opens a silver-tray envelope with four photos of the night she handed his brother a glass, then walks out and gets in her ex's car.
My father-in-law raised his glass in front of two hundred guests and called me his daughter.
I was four hours married and I still hadn't eaten.
My husband stood beside me in his black tuxedo with the bottle of champagne in his hand.
He never drank from a glass someone else handed him.
He filled his own, even at his own wedding, and he filled mine too.
"To Mara," his father said, "who walked into this family on her own two feet."
The ballroom of the estate clapped.
Under the chandelier I smiled until my cheeks hurt, because I had a reason to be here that nobody in the room knew.
My maid of honor caught my elbow at the dessert table.
She wore the sage dress I had picked for her, and her red ponytail was coming loose.
"A waiter gave me this for you," Molly said. "It's got your name on it in fancy writing."
It was a cream envelope, thick, with MARA in black ink.
"It's probably a gift card," Molly said. "Open it later. You've got a cake to cut."
I opened it in the powder room instead.
I locked the stall and sat down on the lid in a gown that cost more than my aunt's funeral.
There were four photographs inside.
The first showed me at a hotel bar, handing a tall glass to a man at a corner table.
The second showed the same man looking up at me and smiling.
The third showed a service corridor, and me setting a silver tray on a shelf with one glass on it.
In the fourth, a man's hand rested on the small of my back.
I knew that hand, because it was Rocco's, and I knew the date printed in the corner of every photo.
March 14, three years ago, the night my husband's older brother died.
He had been the heir.
Now I was wearing his family's name, and I had carried the last drink he ever held.
A card came out of the envelope last, in handwriting I used to read over breakfast.
Congratulations, tesoro. I'm glad you're settled. We should talk, before the Sunday dinner. R.
My hands wouldn't stay still.
I put the photos under the blue garter on my thigh and pulled the dress down over them.
Molly was waiting outside the stall with her arms crossed.
She was the only person alive who knew Rocco had pictures of me.
She did not know what was in them.
"Mar, you're gray," she said. "Is it him?"
"He sent them to my wedding."
Molly took both my hands in hers and held on.
"Okay. Breathe. Rocco never kept copies, remember? He told you that himself the day you left."
"He kept these."
"Then he's bluffing the rest. He's a bully, not a magician. Don't say a word to Sandro tonight."
I looked at her.
She had been the first person to be kind to me after Rocco, in a pharmacy in Dorchester, with a coupon she didn't have to give me.
"Okay," I said.
Someone knocked on the door.
"Mara?"
It was Sandro.
I could see the toes of his black shoes under the door.
"The photographer wants us on the stairs," he said. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
"You're a bad liar, mia moglie."
I held my breath.
"Whatever it is, you can tell me," he said, quieter. "I won't hurt you. Not ever."
I wanted to open the door so badly my knees ached.
Then I thought of what his father said at Sunday dinner the first time I met him.
Anyone who helps a Lupo gets handed back to the Lupos.
Rocco had been a Lupo his whole life.
"Give me two minutes," I said. "My lipstick."
His shoes didn't move for a moment.
"Two minutes," he said, and went.
I turned over the fourth photo, because Rocco's writing was on the back.
Loading dock. After the cake.
So I decided.
I stood on the stairs with my husband for the photographer, and I smiled.
I cut the cake and fed him a bite while two hundred people cheered.
I laughed when Bianca, his sister, shoved a fork in his face.
Then I picked up my bouquet, told him I was throwing it from the back stairs for the girls, and walked out of the ballroom.
Nobody stopped me.
The waiters on the service stairs flattened themselves against the wall to let a bride through.
The loading dock was dark and cold and smelled of cigarettes.
A black car sat at the bottom with its engine running.
The rear door opened before I reached it.
So I got in the car.
Rocco sat on the far side in his gray overcoat, with silver at his temples and the same soft smile.
"There she is," he said. "You look beautiful, tesoro. He's a lucky man."
"Take your photos and leave."
"I'm not here to leave." He tilted his head. "You've seen four. I kept the fifth for Sunday."
My throat closed.
"What fifth?"
"The one that ends it." He took my bouquet gently out of my hands and set it on the seat. "Sunday, you'll open the study in that house and bring me what's in the safe, or the Don gets all five."
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