My Billionaire Ex Regrets Throwing Me to the Mafia Don novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Ruby
Brent laughs at Giulia's deadline and tosses the ruby ring to his assistant, and that night four men in black arrive at the penthouse door for Signorina Caruso.
Where I come from, a Caruso daughter who isn't married by thirty goes home and marries whoever the elders choose.
I turned thirty in one month.
I told Brent at four in the afternoon, in my office, with the door closed.
He laughed before I finished.
"What is this, the Middle Ages? You're going to be sold for a goat?"
"It's not a joke, Brent."
"Giulia, I told you I'd marry you. I've told you for years. Stop trying to rush me with this village fairy tale."
He reached into his jacket and took out a small red box.
I knew that box.
I had seen it in his desk drawer in February, and I had pretended I hadn't.
He opened it.
The ruby was the color of fresh blood, set in platinum.
"I was going to do it tonight," he said. "At Marchetti's. Candles, the whole thing."
My heart did something stupid.
Then he looked past me at the glass wall.
Haley was at her desk outside, pretending to type.
He opened my door.
"Haley. Catch."
He tossed the box across the doorway.
She caught it against her chest with both hands.
Her cheeks went pink.
"Since you're so desperate," Brent said to me, "I think we both need to cool off. Maybe she'll appreciate it."
He winked at her.
Then he walked down the hall toward the elevators with his hands in his pockets.
Ten years.
I had met him when I was nineteen and pouring his coffee.
I had built this company with him at a kitchen table.
He had just thrown my ring to someone else.
Haley came in and shut the door behind her.
She set the open box on my desk and slid it toward me.
"He didn't mean it," she said softly. "You should have it. Really."
The ring sat there between us.
She had already taken it out once.
I could see the smudge of her thumbprint on the stone.
"Take it," I said. "It's your size, isn't it?"
The pink left her face all at once.
I had hired her three years ago.
I had taught her how to read a freight contract and which fork to use at a client dinner.
I had lent her my own black dress for her first board meeting.
I stood up, took her by the shoulders and walked her backward out my door.
She stumbled on her heels in the hall.
Half the floor looked up.
"Tell your boss we're done," I said.
I shut the door.
Then I sat down and dialed a number I had not dialed in ten years.
It rang once.
"Pronto."
My father's voice had not changed at all.
"It's me," I said in Sicilian. "Tell the elders yes."
There was a long silence on the line.
"I'll send for you," he said, and hung up.
I went home and packed.
Brent's penthouse in Tribeca had been my home for six years.
Almost nothing in it was mine.
The coffee machine was mine. The good knives. A shelf of books in Italian he said made the living room look cluttered.
I left all of it.
I folded my suits into one suitcase and put my passport in my coat pocket.
At nine I pulled the zipper closed.
The front door banged open so hard it hit the wall.
Brent stood in the foyer, pulling his tie loose.
He looked at the suitcase.
He didn't look worried.
He looked annoyed.
"You couldn't wait until I got home? You had to make a scene at the office first?"
"I didn't make a scene."
"You put your hands on my assistant in front of forty people."
"Didn't Haley give you my message?"
His jaw went tight.
"Giulia, you're being insane. What's your problem with her? You mentored that girl. She was crying in the bathroom for an hour. Are you trying to wreck her life?"
I looked at him.
He was angry for her.
He had not once, in ten years, been angry for me.
"I'm leaving," I said. "I'm going home to get married."
He actually smiled.
"Home. To your little village with the goats."
"To Palermo."
"Fine. Go. Take a week. Eat some pasta and cry to your aunts."
He stepped aside and swept his arm at the door.
"You'll be back. You know why? Because out there you're nobody. You're a girl who waited tables. Everything you have, I gave you."
"I wrote the system every truck in your company runs on."
"You wrote code. I built a company. There's a difference, sweetheart."
The doorbell rang.
Brent frowned and looked at his watch.
"Who the hell is that at nine at night?"
He yanked the door open, ready to yell at a neighbor.
Four men in black suits stood in the hall.
They were big and silent and none of them looked at Brent.
The one in front bowed his head to me.
"Signorina Caruso," he said. "The Don is waiting downstairs."
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