My Mafia Husband Fed Me Birth Control, So I Took His Throne novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Carmine's House

Her uncle's doctor confirms she can have a baby, and Carmine offers her anything. Vincent walks in alone and sets his gun on Carmine's desk to take his wife home.

My uncle's house in Bay Ridge smelled like garlic and cigars, the way it had since I was twelve.

He met me at the door in his cardigan, with both arms out.

"Come here, kid."

I let him hold me.

I had not cried in front of Vincent's men.

I did not cry in my uncle's front hall either, but my hands shook against his back.

"Two years," Carmine said into my hair. "Two years that animal fed you poison."

"It's not poison. It's birth control."

"Same thing, to a woman who wants a baby."

He steered me into the den.

A man I knew from his Sunday card games was already there, a doctor with a black bag open on the desk.

"Just blood, sweetheart," the doctor said. "Your uncle thought you'd want to know what it did to you."

I rolled up my sleeve.

I watched the needle go in and watched the vial fill dark red.

It took an hour to hear back, and I spent it on the couch with a blanket on my knees, because Carmine would not let me sit anywhere else.

My phone lit up on the arm of the couch.

Vincent. Vincent. Vincent.

I watched the screen light up again and turned the phone face down.

"He's calling to make sure you're not talking," Carmine said, standing at the window. "That's all it is."

"He didn't leave a message."

"Of course he didn't."

The doctor came back with a piece of paper and a kind face.

"Everything looks normal, Antonia. The pills stop ovulation, and the effect wears off.

"Within a few months of stopping, your body should do what it's meant to."

I let out a sound that was half a laugh.

"So I could have had a baby this whole time."

"Any time he let you," Carmine said.

He crossed the room and knelt in front of the couch, which at fifty-eight cost him something.

"I raised you," he said. "I walked you down that aisle. I told you Vincent Strozzi was a serious man who'd take care of you."

"You did."

"I was wrong. That's on me." His eyes were wet. "Now you tell me what you want, and I'll do it. A lawyer. A new house. Men on his door. A good husband, in a year, who'll give you the baby you've been begging for."

"I don't want a new husband."

"You will."

"I want him to say it to my face."

My uncle looked at me for a long moment.

Then he got up, went to the sideboard, and came back with a jar.

White cap. Orange label. The prenatal brand he had brought me every Sunday.

"Start these tonight," he said. "Whatever he did, your body's yours again."

I took it from him, and the jar was heavy and cool in my hand.

I'd swallowed what Vincent handed me for two years without a single question.

I turned the jar over, read the label, and set it on the table beside the couch.

"I'll start in the morning."

"Tonight, Antonia."

"In the morning, Uncle."

He smiled and patted my cheek.

It was past four when the front doorbell rang.

One of Carmine's men went to answer and came back too fast.

"Boss," he said. "It's Strozzi."

Carmine's hand went into his jacket. "How many?"

"One. He came alone."

My uncle looked at me.

I looked at the door.

Vincent walked into the den with his coat open and his hands at his sides.

Three of Carmine's men had patted him down in the hall.

He had let them.

He did not look at the doctor, or the vials, or my uncle.

He looked at me, on the couch with a blanket on my knees, and his face was gray.

"Antonia."

"You came to my uncle's house," I said.

"I came for my wife."

He reached behind him and drew something from the back of his belt that the men in the hall had missed, or had let him keep.

It was his gun.

He set it down on my uncle's desk, in front of Carmine's cigar box, with the barrel pointing at himself.

"Now," Vincent said, "you can do what you want with that, Carmine. But I'm taking her home."

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