My Mafia Husband Faked Amnesia, So I Took His Empire novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: A Stranger at His Table

Teo is introduced to his own wife, Sheridan takes her chair, and the first wire Sheridan signs goes to Benny's cousin's garage.

Sheridan picked up my pen and capped it.

It was the pen Teo had given me on our first anniversary. She put it in her own pocket.

"Housekeeping will move Mrs. Landolfi's things to the guest wing," Benny announced to the table. "It's kinder, until the boss is himself."

Twelve captains nodded. A few looked at the floor.

I kept my face pleasant.

"That's thoughtful," I said. "I'd hate to confuse him."

Teo finally looked at me.

"Mrs. Landolfi," he said, and his voice was cool and careful. "I'm told I'm supposed to be introduced to my own life. Please don't take offense."

"None taken."

"Have we met before?"

I almost laughed.

"At the altar," I said. "You were very nervous. You dropped the ring."

A captain coughed into his fist.

Teo's mouth twitched, and he looked down at the table.

Benny leaned in. "Boss, you don't have to sit through this. Miss Wellington can walk you through the morning."

Sheridan rose, and Benny pulled out the chair beside Teo for her.

That chair had been mine for six years.

She sat in it, and she touched Teo's sleeve, lightly, and left her hand there.

I felt every man at that table decide which of us he was going to side with.

I stood.

Fausto Pellegrino stood with me.

He was the oldest man in the room, sixty-three, with silver hair and a cane he never leaned on. He did not say a word.

Nobody else had stood for me since the clinic.

I walked out into the hall, and he followed.

The housekeeper was already carrying my coats up the stairs. She would not meet my eye.

Fausto took my elbow and steered me into the coat room and shut the door.

"Your signature is the only one those nine accounts answer to," he said quietly. "Does my boss know that?"

"He knew it six years ago."

"Then why did you sign?"

"Because he is lying to me, Fausto. And I want him to keep doing it."

The old man's face did not change. His eyes went to my purse, to the corner of a steel chain showing at the zipper.

He looked at it a moment too long.

"Be careful with Benny," he said. "He hasn't smiled like that since the last funeral."

"Whose?"

"Never mind. Go home, signora."

I was drawing breath to ask what he meant when the door opened.

Teo stood there alone.

He had sent Sheridan off to find him tea. He had the stitches in his scalp and the hospital bracelet still on his wrist, and he looked tired.

For one second he looked like the man who used to come home and put his head in my lap.

"Fausto," he said. "Give us the room."

Fausto looked at me. I nodded. He went.

Teo closed the door behind him.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry," he said. "It must be hard, being looked at like this by your husband."

"It is."

"The doctor says not to push it. I don't want to hurt you."

He said it gently, and every word was a lie, and I watched him say it.

My chest hurt so badly that I had to pick something to look at.

I took out my father's watch to check the time.

It was an old steel pocket watch with a scratch across the case. It had stopped keeping good time years ago.

Teo's eyes went to it.

"That's a man's watch."

"It was my father's."

Something moved behind his face. I could not read it. He took a half step toward me and stopped.

"I see," he said. "I'm sorry for your loss."

He said it too fast.

"I never said he was dead."

Teo's jaw tightened.

"Was he not?"

"He is," I said. "But I never told you that."

He did not answer.

He looked at the watch a moment longer, then at the floor, and then he opened the door and walked out without a word.

I stood in the coat room with the watch in my hand.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

It was the bookkeeper who ran the third of the nine accounts, a woman who had been with me since my first month. Every one of the nine would call me before they would call him.

*Miss Wellington just sent her first release,* she wrote. *Four hundred thousand. The beneficiary is Tosca and Sons Auto Body, Red Hook.*

I knew that name. It was Benny's cousin's garage.

It was not a Commission account. It was not a Family expense.

It was Benny's pocket, and Sheridan had been in my chair for under an hour.

*Pay it,* I typed. *Mark every dollar. Mark every release she makes from now on.*

*Mara, you're letting her steal.*

*I'm letting her sign.*

I put the watch away and wound it in my pocket, slowly, one turn at a time, and I listened to it tick.

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