Kneel, Mafia Boss, Your Wife Is Gone novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Gardeners at the Gate

Dominic learns at the villa gate that his baker's-daughter wife is the Sorrentino heir, refuses her divorce papers, and Gemma answers a call by telling someone that Ilaria knows who she is.

I walked down the drive in my father's cardigan with Nico on one side and Aurelio on the other.

Eight of our men stood along the wall, and every one of them had a hand near his belt.

The gate man looked at me.

"Open it, Donna?"

"Open it."

The iron gate swung back, and my husband stepped through.

Dominic Ferraro had flown eleven hours in the same suit he had worn to his anniversary dinner.

His tie was gone, and his grey eyes were bloodshot.

He looked at me, and then at the men along the wall, and then back at me.

"Ila."

"Dominic."

"Get in the car."

"No."

"I flew across the ocean. I'm not having this conversation in front of your father's gardeners."

Nico choked on his coffee.

"Gardeners," he whispered to Aurelio. "He thinks we're gardeners."

Gemma came through the gate behind my husband.

She had a smile on now, soft and worried, the one I had seen across my own table a hundred times.

"Ilaria. Thank God. We were so afraid something happened to you."

She reached for my arm.

I stepped back, and her hand closed on air.

"Gemma," I said. "Where was Dominic yesterday, while my father went into the ground?"

"He was with me. Handling Calabria."

"I called you from the cemetery."

"He couldn't leave." Her voice dropped, kind and hurt. "Please don't make it a fight. You know how much he needed me that night."

I did know.

I knew exactly how much.

"Dominic," I said. "Last night you told me to apologize."

"You walked out of a funeral dinner and sent me a text that said I'd lost my wife."

"I walked out of my father's funeral."

"Your father cut you off. You told me so."

"I told you that."

"What am I supposed to think?" He ran a hand through his hair. "Five years, Ila. You never mentioned family. You never wanted to go back. Now you vanish for a week, and then you send me that?"

Nico leaned in toward me.

"Say the word and I'll walk him back to the car by his collar."

"Not yet."

Dominic frowned at my cousin.

"Who the hell is this?"

"Nico Sorrentino," Nico said, and smiled at him. "I'm her cousin. You'd know, if you had come to the wedding I was never invited to."

Dominic went still.

"Sorrentino," he said.

The word hung in the road.

I watched it work its way through him.

A Ferraro man knew that name. Everyone in his world did. The Don of Naples had been a legend before Dominic was born.

One of the guards on the wall straightened.

"Donna Sorrentino," he said clearly. "Do you want the Americans searched?"

Gemma's head came up fast.

Dominic did not look at the guard.

He looked at me, and I saw the exact second he understood.

"No," he said. "No. Your parents were bakers."

"I never said that. I let you say it."

"You said your father was a baker."

"I said he made things people couldn't live without. I let you finish the sentence."

He took a step toward me.

"Ila, look at me. Tell me this is not what it sounds like."

"My name is Ilaria Sorrentino. My father was Don of Naples for twenty-six years. Somebody ran his car off the Amalfi road nine days ago, and my husband didn't have time for it."

Aurelio drew a folded paper from inside his jacket and held it out.

"Signor Ferraro. Divorce papers, drawn up by our lawyers this morning. You need only sign."

Dominic looked at it like it was a snake.

Gemma took one look at the paper and went pale.

"Dominic," she said, very softly. "Don't touch it. She's not herself. We can sort this out at home."

"You're right," I said to her. "I'm not myself. I've been somebody else for five years."

I took the paper from Aurelio and put it in my husband's hand.

"I won't sign this," he said.

"Then Aurelio will have the court in Naples do it for you."

"A Naples court can't touch a Philadelphia marriage."

"This one can," Aurelio said calmly. "Ask it nicely."

Dominic stared at the paper, and at me, and at the eight men along the wall.

A vein moved in his jaw.

"I don't give divorces," he said.

"You'll give this one."

"I'm not leaving without my wife."

I held his gaze.

I had spent five years afraid of that look.

I felt nothing at all.

"You can try to take her," I said.

"I have a car outside."

"You have a car and one woman who shoots for you. I have two hundred men and my father's house."

Nico beamed.

"I should tell you, Signor Ferraro," he said, "the hotel down the hill is very nice. The sea view is excellent. You'll sleep there tonight."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Then you'll learn to sleep in a hotel," Nico said. "Or on the road. We're flexible."

Dominic stood in the gateway with the divorce papers crushing in his fist.

Gemma touched his sleeve.

He didn't seem to notice.

"Five years," he said hoarsely. "You hid this for five years."

"And you never asked me one question."

He opened his mouth.

Behind him, in the Mercedes, his phone began to ring, loud and sharp.

He turned his head, and I saw a gold seahorse flash on his lapel as he moved.

Gemma got to the car first.

She looked at the screen, and she looked at me, and then she answered it herself.

"Yes," she said into it, very low. "No. She knows who she is."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend