My Father Traded Me for the Don's Sister, So I Married the Don novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: The Crate

At midnight on the sixth day I went down to the kitchen for water.

Luca stood at Rosalba's long table with a glass of wine and a map of the Staten Island waterfront.

He didn't look up.

"You're up," he said.

"So are you."

He still did not look up.

"I've been thinking about your father."

"So have I."

He folded the map, slowly.

"Tell me something," Luca said. "A year on the same island as my sister. Four miles of road between your flat and that house."

I waited.

"And you never once knocked on the door."

I put the glass down.

"I told you. He wouldn't let me in."

"Did you try?"

I looked at the table.

"Twice."

"Twice in a year."

His voice was perfectly level, and it was the most dangerous thing I had heard from him.

"I'm not accusing you," he said.

"You're accusing me."

"I'm asking why a woman who does her father's books, who knows every man on that waterfront by name, never noticed a Vannelli in her own bedroom."

My face went hot.

"Because he told me she was a cousin's widow."

"And you believed it."

I stood up straighter.

"He's my father!"

"He's a man who took my sister off a street."

"I know what he is." I could hear my own voice rising. "I didn't know it then. You think I would have let him keep a girl in my room? You think I'd have sat in a flat over a hardware store and let that happen?"

"I think you didn't ask."

The words landed hard.

I stared at him across the table.

He stared back, and his eyes were hard, and I saw how long he had held it, and how hard it was to hold.

I laughed.

It was a terrible sound.

"You want to talk about not asking?" I said. "You signed me like a crate."

"Raffaela."

"I stood in that hall in a wet dress, and you looked at me, and you asked my father why your sister was in his house. You never asked me my name until I was at the door."

His face tightened.

"I said your name."

"You said it like a name on a file."

He took a step toward me.

"I said it because I knew it."

"You knew it from a file. You didn't ask who I was. You didn't ask if I had a boyfriend, or a job I liked, or a mother who died. You just took the paper."

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