Mafia Princess Returns novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ring
At her engagement dinner Fabiola wakes eight years before her death, takes off the ring in front of both families and drops it in her father's wine.
I died on a bathroom floor in Piero Barbieri's house when I was twenty-seven.
The last thing I felt was cold tile against my cheek.
The next thing I felt was his hand closing on the back of my neck.
I was nineteen again, standing in a cream silk dress, and two hundred people were clapping.
Piero squeezed.
It was the same squeeze he used to give me in front of guests, gentle enough to look like love.
"Smile, amore," he said into my ear, "or I'll teach you how, later, where nobody can see."
My father's garden on Todt Hill glowed with white tents and paper lanterns.
A band played softly near the fountain.
At the head table my father stood with a wine glass raised, bald and smiling behind his wire glasses.
Don Alberto Ferrara, who ruled Staten Island and half of Brooklyn, was giving his daughter away.
I knew this dinner.
I had lived it once already.
I had smiled that night, and then I had smiled for eight years.
The guests were Ferraras and Barbieris, men with thick necks and wives in diamonds.
There was an empty space at the family table where my brother's chair used to be.
Eight months ago the Table had stripped Enrico of his standing and my father had thrown him out.
In three weeks they would pull his body out of the Narrows.
I looked at my left hand.
A square diamond sat on it, heavy as a coin.
Piero's thumb pressed the knob at the base of my skull.
"The toast, Fabiola," he whispered. "Look at your father."
I looked at my father.
My father looked at me over his glass, and there was nothing in his face at all.
For eight years I had wondered whether he knew.
I stopped wondering.
I slid the ring off my finger.
It came easily, because my hands were shaking.
Nobody noticed yet.
My father said, "To my daughter, and to the peace she brings to two great families."
He tipped his glass toward the crowd.
I walked three steps to the head table, held my hand over his wine, and let go.
The ring hit the red wine with a small, clear plop.
The band stopped on a wrong note.
Two hundred faces turned, and the garden went so quiet I heard the fountain.
My father looked into his glass.
"Fabiola," he said gently. "What is this?"
"I'm not marrying him."
My voice came out steadier than I felt.
Piero reached me in two strides, laughing, his hand already finding my neck again.
"She's nervous," he told the tables. "Look at her. It's a big night."
I stepped out of his reach.
"Ten seconds ago he whispered in my ear," I said, loud enough for the back tents.
"He said, smile or I'll teach you how, later, where nobody can see."
Somebody gasped.
Piero's smile held, but a muscle jumped under his eye.
"I said she looked beautiful," he told them.
"Say it again, then," I said. "Louder. Let your father hear it."
Old Barbieri sat at the far table in a gray cardigan, a cigarette he wasn't allowed to light between his fingers.
His eyes went to his son.
They stayed there one second longer than they should have.
In the silence a man laughed once, low and short, near the back.
I looked past the candles and saw a stranger at table nine with a buzzed head and a black jacket he hadn't dressed up for.
He was grinning at me.
Then he put his hand over his mouth and the grin was gone.
My father set his glass down.
He fished the ring out with two fingers, wiped it dry on his napkin, and laid it beside my plate.
His smile never moved.
"My daughter is tired," he told the crowd. "Eat. Drink. Tonight is for celebrating."
The band started again, bravely, a little too fast.
He turned his head toward two men by the house.
"Take her upstairs," he said quietly.
I stared at him.
"She marries him on the twenty-eighth," my father said, "even if you have to carry her."
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