Mafia Boss & His White Rose novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Pippa
Her sister Pippa is enrolled that night and furious about the word job; Domenico brings Pippa a white rose, and Pippa spots what Noelle missed.
At nine the next morning, my sister was sitting on a hospital bed in a paper gown, telling a nurse she had very good veins.
"Everybody says that," the nurse said, tying off her arm.
"Everybody's right," said Pippa.
She was twenty-two, five-foot-four, and she had her dark braid thrown over one shoulder.
Electrodes dotted her chest, and the little scar over her left collarbone showed where the defibrillator sat.
She'd been fainting for eighteen months and lying to me about how often.
I stood in the doorway holding two coffees and the typed page a driver had left at my door at seven.
It was his deal, one clean sheet, with the sentence I had watched him write underlined twice.
He had signed it before I did.
"Noelle." Pippa squinted at me. "You look like you slept in a flower cooler."
"I closed the shop."
"You never close the shop."
"I did today."
"Why?"
"Because you're being admitted to a trial."
She stopped moving.
The nurse looked at the ceiling and found something fascinating there.
"I got a letter," Pippa said slowly. "They said I was number four hundred and eleven."
"They moved you."
"Nobody moves anybody."
"Somebody did."
A tall woman in a white coat came in with a clipboard and a grey bob cut sharp at the jaw.
She introduced herself as the trial director and shook Pippa's hand like a colleague's.
"Miss Everhart, your enrollment was approved last night," she said. "We start with imaging this morning, and then a full workup. The first infusion window opens as soon as your numbers are ready."
"By who?" Pippa said. "Approved by who?"
"By the trustees."
"Which trustee?"
The director's eyes went to me, and then back.
"The chairman of the foundation," she said. "Mr. Carraro."
My sister turned her head and looked at me for a long moment.
"Carraro," she said. "Like the restaurants. Like the guys who own half of Christian Street."
"Like the foundation," I said. "Like the clinic named for his mother."
"Noelle."
"It's a job," I said.
I'd rehearsed it in the shower.
"I'm helping with some events for his family. A donor thing. They pay in access."
"A donor thing."
"Yes."
"You do funerals and prom corsages."
"I'm branching out."
She stared at me.
"You're a terrible liar," she said. "You tuck your hair behind your ear."
I took my hand off my ear.
The director cleared her throat and said she would give us ten minutes, and left with a look that said she'd had this conversation before.
The nurse left, too.
Pippa leaned back on the pillow and breathed carefully through her nose.
"Okay," she said. "Say it plain. Did you do something bad for this?"
"No."
"Did you promise something bad?"
"I offered something bad," I said. "He said no."
Her mouth fell open.
"I'll tell you all of it," I said. "Not today. Today you're a person who gets scanned."
"Noelle."
"Please, Pip."
She looked at my face, and whatever she saw there made her stop pushing.
"One thing," she said. "Is he going to hurt you?"
"I don't think so."
"That's not a no."
"It's the only honest answer I have."
A knock came on the doorframe.
Domenico Carraro stood there in a grey overcoat with a single white rose wrapped in brown paper in his hand.
He wasn't wearing the three-piece suit this morning, only a dark sweater, and without it he looked tired.
He looked like a man who hadn't been to bed.
"Miss Everhart," he said to Pippa. "I'm Domenico."
"I know who you are," said Pippa.
"I won't stay." He crossed the room and set the rose in the water glass on her tray. "The director says you hate hospital food. There's a place on Ninth that delivers. Tell the nurse and it comes."
"Is this a bribe?"
"It's a sandwich."
Something in Pippa's face wavered, and she nearly smiled.
"Thank you for the place," she said, and made it sound like a threat.
"Thank your sister. She walked in the door."
He looked at me once, and it was a short, flat look, and it held absolutely nothing.
Then he left, and the rose stood in its glass between us, perfectly white.
Pippa looked at the rose.
She looked at me.
"That's not a job," she said. "He looked at you like you owe him something and he's not going to collect."
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