My Mob Fiance Offered Exits, So I Took Them novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Exits Are Marked
At the engagement dinner, Domenico offers Rosa three polite exits to frighten her off, and she uses all of them. Standing on the sidewalk before twenty-two watching faces, he asks her plainly to stay.
Domenico Bellandi pulled out my chair, and every man at the table checked his own cutlery.
There were twenty-two of us crowded into the back room of his family's restaurant.
Eleven of his relatives sat on his side and eleven of mine sat on mine.
My mother had come straight from the ovens in her apron and saw no reason to apologize to a tablecloth.
"Miss Vitale," Domenico said. "I've had your place set by the door."
He had gray eyes, a charcoal suit, and a face that had not moved since I walked in.
"It saves you crossing the room," he said, "should you wish to leave."
My mother had raised me on the same rules he had been raised on: in our families nobody asks for anything, you only offer.
A man who shows you the door wants you to use it.
I had also been awake since three that morning, and the door was a short walk.
"That's thoughtful," I said. "Thank you."
I sat down by the door.
The soup came, and Domenico lifted his spoon.
The uncle on my left set his own spoon down and asked the waiter for a fork.
Everyone in Chicago who owned a tablecloth had heard what Domenico Bellandi once did over a soup spoon, and nobody agreed on the details.
At the head of the table, his father raised a glass.
He was a heavy man with silver hair and a green cardigan buttoned under his good jacket.
"To the bride," his father said. "Our house is hers. You will tell us if any of this tires you, Rosa."
"I will," I said.
His father smiled at me, and I decided it was a nice smile.
Across the table my sister Lucia opened a green notebook in her lap and wrote down a number.
Domenico cut his veal into eight even squares and ate none of them.
"The kitchen will make you anything you like, Miss Vitale," he said. "Anything at all."
Everyone at the table heard it, which made it an offer.
"Anything?" I said.
"Anything."
"Two eggs over easy," I said. "And toast."
The waiter looked at Domenico, and Domenico nodded at him once.
His brother Pietro leaned in from the far side of the table.
"Do the thing with the knife," Pietro whispered.
"There is no thing with the knife," Domenico whispered back.
The chef came out of the kitchen himself to ask how I liked my yolks.
Nobody had ever said that sentence at an engagement dinner.
I told him runny, and he went back to the stove without another word.
Twenty people ate veal and watched me wait for toast.
When the plate came, I ate the toast first, and then the eggs, and then I wiped the plate.
"You've been this polite for two hours," I said to Domenico, low. "You must be worn out."
His hand moved the knife a quarter inch to straighten it.
"I am very well, thank you," he said.
The tip of his ear had gone red.
"You must be tired yourself, Miss Vitale," he said. "The bakery keeps terrible hours."
I knew exactly what that sentence was.
It was the second exit, and it was bigger than the first.
"I've been up since three," I said.
"Of course you have."
"Then I should go."
I stood up and said, "Thank you, everyone. It was a lovely evening."
Forks stopped all along the table.
At the head of it, Carlo Bellandi smiled for the second time that night, and this time it reached his eyes.
My mother buttered a roll.
She had taught me that you never refuse a host's offer, and she was not going to interfere with her own teaching now.
Pietro dropped his fork.
Lucia turned a page.
Domenico rose, because the groom has to walk the bride out, and followed me through the dining room past forty feet of staring waiters.
On the Taylor Street sidewalk the October air smelled of garlic and exhaust.
A black car stood at the curb with its engine running.
"My car is yours for as long as you like," Domenico said. "The driver is at your disposal."
"That's very generous," I said.
The driver was a man in his sixties with a gray mustache, and he opened the back door before I reached it.
"Where to, miss?"
"Harlem Avenue," I said. "The bakery."
The seat was leather and smelled of lemon polish.
The driver shut the door, and I rolled down the window to say good night.
Domenico was standing under the restaurant's front window with his hands at his sides.
Behind him, through the glass, twenty faces had turned toward the street.
Nobody had even pretended to look at the menu.
He straightened one cuff.
Then he straightened the other.
"Rosa," he said. It was the first time he had used my name.
"Yes?" I said.
"Stay," Domenico said.
"I'm sorry?" I said.
I had heard him perfectly.
I wanted to hear him say it twice.
"I would like you to stay for dessert," Domenico said, loudly enough for the sidewalk. "Please."
Through the window, Carlo Bellandi set down his wine glass and did not smile.
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