Reborn, My Sister Stole My Marriage novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Two Contracts
At the signing table Roisin claims Nino's agreement and Fiona signs for the exile instead, and Dominic warns her about tea nobody mentioned.
When I came back to life, my little sister was holding my marriage agreement.
The last thing I remembered was a hospital ceiling.
Then I was sitting at a long table in the back room of Brancato's restaurant on Arthur Avenue, with a glass of red wine in front of me and thirty people staring.
I was twenty-four again.
Our father sat at the head of the table in his best black suit. The old Don sat at his right, leaning on a cane.
Across from me was Nino Brancato, the Don's grandson and the heir to everything in New York.
He looked at me.
Roisin sat beside our father with one hand flat on the leather folder in front of her.
It said BRANCATO in gold letters.
"Fiona," she said softly. "I'm so sorry. I know Nino was supposed to marry you. But I think he and I are a better match."
She said it.
Her other hand slid to her stomach.
She had done that since she was nine years old, every time she was about to take something that wasn't hers.
She had done it over my birthday cake. She had done it over my doll.
Roisin was twenty-two and blonde and pretty, and she looked almost embarrassed.
She could not hide the shine in her eyes.
Then I saw the other folder.
It lay open on the table in front of my empty chair, and the gold letters on it said FERRANTE.
Nobody had told me about a Ferrante agreement.
In my first life that folder had never been in front of me.
It had been hers.
Roisin had pushed it toward my chair herself, before our father said a word.
Roisin had been reborn too.
I sat very still.
In my first life I married Nino Brancato at twenty-four, and I spent nine years making him a Don.
I cleaned up his money. I won over the old men who didn't trust him. I used my father's union votes and my father's friends in city hall every time Nino got himself into trouble.
I lost two babies, one after the other, and I buried both of them.
Then I gave him a son, and Nino was crowned, and everyone said how lucky he was.
Nobody asked what I had paid.
And Roisin, who had married some exile from New Jersey, had watched all of it from the cheap seats.
She had decided she wanted my seat.
"Fiona, honey." Rosalia Brancato leaned toward me from Nino's side, soft and silver-haired, in a string of pearls. "I know it stings. But look at your sister's face. Don't you want her to be happy?"
"Of course you do," Nino said, and smiled. "No hard feelings, Fiona. It's only paper."
His mother patted Roisin's wrist.
"We take such good care of our girls," she said.
Our father cleared his throat.
"Fiona. This is the Don's table. Don't make a scene."
I looked down the long table at the people watching me.
The old capos. Their wives. The priest. A man from the Teamsters.
They were waiting for me to cry.
I almost laughed instead.
Roisin wanted him. Roisin could have him.
She could have the dinners and the books and the old men who hated her. She could have the mother-in-law, and the mess Nino left behind every night.
I would have given her the whole city if she'd asked.
I picked up the Ferrante folder.
At the far end of the table a man sat alone, with an empty chair on each side of him.
He wore a plain grey suit. He was broad through the shoulders, dark-haired, and he hadn't looked up once.
Dominic Ferrante, the Jersey exile. The old Don had called him "the man from across the river" when he walked in.
He had not been allowed in New York for six years.
He was here because my father's union controlled every dock he would need to get home.
I turned to the first page and read the names.
Fiona Keane. Dominic Ferrante.
So I picked up the pen.
"What are you doing?" Roisin said. Her voice came out too high.
"Signing."
Nino laughed out loud.
"You're taking the Jersey man? He needs a permission slip to cross the bridge."
"Then he'll have plenty of time for me," I said.
Somebody down the table laughed, and then somebody else.
Nino stopped smiling.
Roisin stared at me.
She had expected tears. She had expected me to beg.
Her hand tightened on her stomach, and I saw her try to work out what she had missed.
I signed my name, clean and fast, on the line above Dominic's.
His signature was already there.
It was dry. It had been dry for a while.
The old Don grunted, took the pen from my hand and witnessed it without a word.
Chairs scraped. Glasses rose. Rosalia started to make a toast.
I stood up, and someone was behind my chair.
Dominic Ferrante had walked the whole length of the table without a sound.
He pulled my chair out of the way and bent his head.
His voice was so low that only I heard it.
"Don't drink any tea your sister's future mother-in-law pours you."
Then he straightened up and walked out.
Nobody had said a word about tea.
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