Mom Married the Don for Peace, So I Made His Son Kneel novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Saucer

I lifted the chain over my head in his kitchen and let the ring slide down into a saucer.

It was a blue saucer with a chipped rim, from my mother's cupboard on Gano Street.

The gold clinked on the china and lay still.

Riccardo stood on the other side of the counter and did not breathe.

"There," I said. "It's a saucer. It's not me."

"Madalena."

"Tonight it doesn't hold anything. I don't hold anything."

I took the navy tie out of my coat pocket and laid it on the counter.

"You do."

He looked at the tie.

It was the wedding tie, the one I had wound around my fist on the church steps and never given back.

"Tie me," I said. "Wrists first. Then something for my eyes."

"Rebelo."

"And don't ask me anything. You decide. If I hate it I'll say so."

His throat moved.

He took the navy tie from the counter in one hand.

With the other he took a gray silk tie off the hook by the door.

I held out my wrists, together, in front of me.

He wound the navy silk around them, twice, three times, and made a knot that was snug and not cruel.

I felt the pull of it all the way up my arms.

My breath came shallow and fast.

"Look at me," he said.

I looked at him.

He was so serious, with his brown eyes steady and his hands very sure.

"Iannotti," I said, "if you don't put that on me, I'll do it myself."

He smiled, the way I loved best, with half his mouth.

Then he folded the gray silk and laid it across my eyes, and the world went dark.

I heard him tie it behind my head.

His fingers were gentle in my hair.

"Good," he said, very softly. "That's good."

I shivered.

I could smell him, soap and wool and the cold on his sweater.

I could hear the refrigerator humming and my own heart.

He took my bound hands and lifted them, and I felt his mouth on my knuckles, right across the scar.

"I'm going to take my time," he said.

"You said that in the car."

"I meant it in the car."

He undressed me slowly.

He lifted my sweater over my bound wrists with a careful tug and let it drop on the floor.

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