Mafia's Good Girl novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Four Hundred Eighty Thousand
Janelle walks into the Don's restaurant with her dead father's gun in her coat, his men drag her out, and Luciano offers a contract that pays for her mother's surgery, with her bed in the price.
The woman in the billing office slid a sheet of paper across the desk and said four hundred eighty thousand dollars.
She said it kindly, which was worse.
"Your mother's surgery is Thursday, Miss Hostetter," she said.
"We hold the slot until Friday at five. After that it goes to the next patient."
I had three thousand one hundred dollars in my checking account.
I thanked her, because my mother raised me to.
Then I went down to the parking garage, sat on a concrete step, and put my hand inside my coat lining.
The revolver was where I had sewn it a week ago.
It was my father's .38, small and heavy and cold through the cloth.
He had driven for Salvatore Ferrante for eleven years.
Six years ago they told us it was a car fire.
Nobody ever said whose car, or why it was parked in Harrison at two in the morning.
The old Don sent a lily wreath the size of a door, and his son never came at all.
His son was Luciano Ferrante.
Every Tuesday night he ate dinner at Rosso's on Ferry Street, at the back table, with his back to the wall.
It was Tuesday.
I took the bus.
Rosso's was warm and loud and smelled of garlic.
I walked past the hostess like I belonged there, because I had grown up three blocks away and she knew my face.
The back table had four men at it and one empty chair.
The man in the middle didn't look up.
He was cutting veal into neat squares, in a black suit with the collar open, and a pale scar split his left eyebrow.
Everybody in the Ironbound knew what he was.
"Mr. Ferrante," I said.
The table went silent.
"My name is Janelle Hostetter. My father was Walter Hostetter."
His knife stopped.
He lifted his eyes, and they were so dark I couldn't find the pupils.
My right hand was already in my coat.
I never got the revolver out.
A hand the size of a skillet closed around my wrist from behind and twisted it flat to my back.
Another man took my other arm.
My feet left the floor.
"Easy, miss," a soft voice said in my ear. "Please don't make me hurt you."
"Let go of me!"
"Benny," Luciano Ferrante said.
He had not raised his voice.
The hands stopped.
I was set down on my heels, and my wrist burned where the big man had held it.
Luciano stood up.
He was taller than I'd pictured, and he came around the table in no hurry.
He took my wrist in both hands and turned it over under the light.
There was a red band across the skin.
His thumb settled on my pulse and stayed there.
My heart slammed against it, and he must have felt every beat.
"Who sent you?" he said.
"Nobody sent me."
"My mother needs four hundred eighty thousand dollars by Friday," I said. "Or she dies."
I hadn't planned to say that.
It came out of me.
He kept his thumb on my pulse, and his eyes went over my face slowly.
"Take her to the house," he said.
"No," I said. "No, I'll scream."
They took me out through the kitchen.
I was walked, not carried, between two enormous men.
In the hall Benny reached for my coat.
"Leave it on," Luciano said behind us.
The house was gray stone behind a wall in Forest Hill.
The study had a green lamp, and a desk the size of a bed.
Luciano sat on the edge of it and a stack of paper lay next to his hand.
"Sit."
I stayed standing.
"Five hundred thousand dollars," he said. "Paid to the hospital tonight. The surgery, the room, the rehabilitation. What's left over is yours."
"For what?"
"For ninety days of living in this house."
I laughed, a short ugly sound.
"I'm not for sale."
"Page four," he said, and turned the paper around.
I read it standing up.
*For the term, Miss Hostetter will live in Mr. Ferrante's house and share his bed whenever he asks. If she leaves before the term ends, everything paid on her behalf is owed back to Mr. Ferrante in full.*
I read it twice.
My face went hot, and then cold.
"You're buying me."
"I'm buying ninety days," he said.
"Three dinners. You sit beside me and look like you belong to me."
His mouth moved, barely.
"People are going to try to marry me off. A woman who sleeps down the hall doesn't stop that. A woman in my bed does."
"And that's the price."
"That's the price. I won't pretend it isn't, and I won't hide it in small print."
"And if I say no?"
"Then you walk out, and the half million is yours to pay back. Your mother is on a table Thursday morning."
He said it flatly, with no cruelty in it, and that was the cruelest part.
I looked at his hands on the desk, large and still, and at the scar through his eyebrow.
I looked at his mouth, and I hated that I looked.
The pen was black and heavy.
I thought of my father's gun, sewn into the lining of my coat.
I thought of Thursday.
I could pay his price.
I had come to take his life, and he was asking for ninety days of my body.
I signed my name on every page, and my hand didn't shake.
He took the contract and put it in a drawer.
Then he stood and came around the desk.
He turned my collar flat where the grip had crumpled it, and his knuckles brushed my jaw.
He never looked at the lining.
"Welcome to my house, Miss Hostetter," he said.
Upstairs, in a guest room with an unlocked door, I sat on a huge bed and took out my father's gun.
Nobody had locked the door.
Nobody needed to.
Six rounds sat in the cylinder.
I held it in both hands for a long time.
I could walk down that hall right now.
But my mother was on the table Thursday morning, and the money for it was in his hand.
After Thursday, I told the gun.
After Thursday, I would do what I came to do.
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