Mom Married the Don for Peace, So I Made His Son Kneel novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Kneel
At her mother's wedding reception Joaquim dares the Iannotti heir to kneel to Vítor's daughter, Riccardo kneels at once, and Madalena takes over the humiliation and walks him out on his tie.
My new stepbrother knelt at my feet in front of three hundred people, and I let him.
It happened an hour after my mother married his father.
The club hall had two sides.
My family sat along the left wall, and his family sat along the right.
Nobody had crossed the dance floor between them all night.
I was maid of honor, in a green dress, with a glass of vinho verde I hadn't touched.
My father's gold ring hung on a chain under my collar.
My mother had put it there herself on the church steps, after the ceremony.
"Never take it off, filha," she had said.
I had not known why, and I hadn't asked.
Before the ceremony she had sent me out to the car with twelve bouquets and shut the sacristy door behind me.
Inside, the old captains and his father's men had settled whatever men settle to end a war.
A dozen people were dead because of that war, and my father was one of them.
Riccardo Iannotti sat at the far end of the head table with his hands flat on the cloth.
He was twenty-nine, tall, in a navy suit, with a still face.
I had met him that morning for the length of a handshake.
"Miss Rebelo," he had said, and I had said, "Mr. Iannotti," and he hadn't looked at me again until now.
Joaquim Tavares stood up at the Portuguese table.
He had been my father's first mate for twenty years, and he had been drinking since the church.
He tapped a fork against his glass until the band stopped.
"A toast to the Rebelos," Joaquim said, in Portuguese and then in English. "To Vítor, who can't be here."
The left wall stood and said my father's name back to him.
The right wall stayed in its chairs.
"Vítor's daughter wears his ring tonight," Joaquim said.
The old captains beside him crossed themselves, looking at my collar.
"So let the room see what that ring is worth. Let the Iannotti boy kneel to her."
The hall went so quiet I heard the kitchen door swing.
On the right wall a chair scraped, and Fortunato Iannotti, my mother's husband of one hour, got halfway to his feet.
"Riccardo," he said, low. "You have knelt once today already. You don't have to."
"Sit down, Papa," Riccardo said.
He stood and walked out onto the dance floor.
Joaquim wanted a refusal.
I knew it at once.
If the Iannotti heir said no, the peace would die before the cake was cut, and the men would finish it in the parking lot.
Riccardo didn't look at his father, or at Joaquim, or at my mother.
He looked at my collar, where the chain lay, and then he looked at me.
He came around the head table and went down on one knee on the parquet beside my chair.
His eyes came up to mine.
He was a head taller than me standing, and now he was below me, and he waited.
Three hundred people watched Vítor Rebelo's daughter, and I had a moment to choose.
I could stand and pull him up and end it, and Joaquim would have everything he came for.
Or I could make it mine.
I held out my right hand, palm down.
A pale scar ran across the knuckles, where a line took the skin off when I was sixteen.
"Kiss it," I said.
He took my hand in both of his.
His palms were hot and dry.
He bent his head and put his mouth on my knuckles and left it there.
I felt it low in my stomach, a hard pull that had nothing to do with the room.
His lips moved once over the scar.
Somewhere behind me an aunt made a small noise.
"Stay there until I say," I said.
"Yes," Riccardo said, so quietly only I heard it.
His shoulders came down when he said it.
I looked across the hall at Joaquim.
"Is this what you wanted to see, Quim?" I said, loud enough for the whole left wall.
"My father never liked you drunk. He liked you less when you were stupid."
Someone on the Portuguese side laughed and stopped.
Then a man on the Italian side laughed and did not stop, and then the hall did.
Joaquim sat down with his face dark red.
I let Riccardo stay where he was a little longer.
I wanted every table to see that he stayed.
At the end of the head table, my mother was watching the ring and not me, and she nodded once.
"Up," I said.
Riccardo rose in one smooth motion and stood close enough that I could smell starch and cedar.
I took the end of his tie and wound it once around my fist.
"Rebelo," he said, very low. "What are you doing?"
"Leaving," I said. "You're coming."
His father had sat down again.
Fortunato Iannotti said nothing at all, and the look he gave his son was not anger.
I walked down the length of the dance floor with the tie in my hand and Riccardo a step behind me.
Both families watched us go, and not one of them said a word.
At the door, on Atwells Avenue, the October air hit my bare arms.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"Mine," I said. "Not your father's house."
I wound the tie once more around my fist, and he followed me down the steps.
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