My Mafia Family Chose Their Adopted Daughter, So I Married the Don They Feared novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Joke at My Banquet
Her brother lets her fiancé choose her adopted sister, then announces she will marry the beggar from the church steps. Viola asks the beggar herself and walks out with him.
My brother stood up at my engagement banquet and tapped his fork against his glass.
Four hundred guests went quiet.
The heads of every family in the Sicilian underworld had come to our villa above Palermo, and half of them already had their phones raised.
I sat at the long table in my mother's ivory dress, with my fiancé beside me and my brother at the head.
My fiancé and I had been promised to each other for eight years.
Tonight was supposed to be the night the date was set.
Just before my brother rose, my fiancé leaned close to my ear.
"Whatever he says, smile," he whispered. "I'll explain everything after."
"Explain what?"
"Trust me, Viola."
His hand was cold on mine.
Across the table, my adopted sister sat in blue silk and would not lift her eyes from her plate.
I smiled, because he had asked me to.
"Tonight is a happy night for the Ardizzone family," my brother said. "But one person in this house asked me for one thing, and I have never told her no."
He looked at Nerina.
Nerina covered her face with both hands.
"Tullio," Massimo said. "Tell my sister."
Tullio stood up.
He did not look at me.
"I can't marry Viola," he said. "I'm in love with Nerina."
Nobody gasped.
That was worse.
Four hundred faces turned toward mine, and the phones tilted to catch whatever I did next.
Nerina reached across the table, and Tullio took her hand.
"I didn't want it to happen like this," she said, crying.
She did not let go of him.
"Viola won't go without a husband," Massimo said. "This family does not leave its own with nothing."
He nodded at the door.
Two of his guards walked in with a man between them.
I knew him.
He had sat on the steps of San Domenico every Sunday for a year, and every Sunday I had put a loaf from the parish kitchen into his hands.
He wore the same gray coat, buttoned to the throat.
His name was Santo, and he had told me that once and nothing else.
"The man my sister has fed for a year," Massimo said. "Let her marry what she is so fond of."
Laughter started at the far tables and rolled toward us.
The guards set Santo in an empty chair by the wall.
Every waiter who passed him looked down at his shoes.
One of them put a glass of water by his elbow without being asked.
Santo did not look at the people laughing.
He was looking at the little black medal on the chain at Nerina's throat, and he did not stop looking at it.
I thought about my choices.
If I ran, I was the girl who ran.
If I sat, I was the joke.
So I stood up.
Tullio said my name.
I walked the whole length of that ballroom with the phones following me, and my heels were loud on the marble.
I stopped in front of the beggar.
Up close his eyes were dark and steady, and he had shaved that morning.
"Santo," I said. "Will you marry me?"
The laughing died.
He stood, slowly, and he was a head taller than I had ever noticed from the church steps.
"Yes," he said.
His voice was low and clear, not the mumble I knew.
"Tonight," I said. "At San Domenico."
"Tonight," he said.
"Viola, sit down." Massimo had not stopped smiling, but his knuckles had gone white on the fork. "You walk out that door with him, you are not an Ardizzone."
"Then keep the name," I said.
"Viola, wait." Tullio had come around the table. "I said I'd explain."
"You did explain, Tullio. That was the explanation."
Santo offered me his arm.
I took it.
Nobody stopped us.
The guards at the door stepped aside without being told to, and the waiters along the wall kept their eyes on the floor.
The night air on the terrace was cold on my bare shoulders.
Santo took off his gray coat and put it around me.
It smelled of rain and bread.
We were halfway down the villa's stone steps when he spoke again, in a Sicilian so clean and unhurried that I stopped walking.
"Viola," he said. "Before we reach the church, you should know I didn't come here by accident."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend