Sacrificed To The Don They Now Regret novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Coffee
At the Brandolini charity dinner Fiorella's coffee hits the Don's sister in the eyes, and Livia offers herself as the hostage; her mother's text says it will be over soon.
The hot coffee hit the Don's sister full in the face, and two hundred people watched it happen.
She screamed and clawed at her eyes.
The silver pot hit the marble and rolled.
My adopted sister stood over her with the empty tray and her mouth open.
"I'm sorry," Fiorella whispered. "I'm so sorry, I tripped."
Nobody answered her.
The Brandolini charity dinner was the biggest night of the year for every family on the East Coast.
The Don's sister was lying on the floor with her hands over her eyes.
Men in dark suits were already moving.
Lorenzo Brandolini reached her before anyone else did.
He knelt in the spilled coffee and took her wrists very gently and pulled her hands away.
Her eyelids were swelling shut.
"Get the doctor," he said, and nobody argued with how quietly he said it.
Then he stood and looked across the ballroom, straight at our table.
My mother had her fingers around my wrist so hard that it hurt.
I had not wanted to come at all.
I never go to these dinners, and my mother had still stood in my doorway that morning and said, "Wear the green dress, Livia. The Santoros should be seen."
Fiorella had not wanted to carry coffee either, until tonight.
She had asked the head waiter for the tray herself, smiling, to be useful.
Lorenzo walked to us across the floor and the crowd stepped back for him.
He was thirty-six, he ran everything on this coast, and I had never heard him raise his voice.
He did not raise it now.
"My sister will be lucky to see again," he said to my mother. "I want a Santoro in my house within five days. A hostage. If I don't have one, I will take the docks, the street and every one of you."
My mother's knees went.
My twin brother Paolo caught her, and went white, and said nothing.
Lorenzo's men walked us to the coat room and shut the door.
My mother took my hands in both of hers.
Her eyes were red.
"Fiorella didn't mean it," she said. "She's terrified. She's in the ladies' lounge shaking so hard she can't breathe. She would never survive a night in that house."
"Mama," I said.
"Livia, you're tough," she said. "You always have been. You can survive this. Just for a little while, and then we'll bring you home."
I looked at Paolo.
He rubbed his face. "That Don is a psycho, Liv. Everybody knows what he did to the two men who stole from him."
"So you want to send me to him," I said.
"I'm not saying that."
"Then say what you're saying."
He looked at the floor.
I went to the ladies' lounge.
Fiorella was sitting in the corner armchair with her hands folded in her lap.
They were perfectly still.
Then she saw me, and her whole body started to shake.
"Livia," she cried. "Please don't let them send me. I can't. I'd die. You know I'd die."
She was twenty-three and we had taken her in when she was eight.
I had shared my room with her, my coat with her, my birthday cake with her.
I crouched in front of her and held her hands, and they were cold.
"Breathe," I told her. "Nobody is sending you anywhere."
"Thank you," she said into my shoulder. "Thank you, thank you."
I stood up with the answer already in my mouth.
I had kept the Santoro books since my father died.
I knew every man on our block who owed the Brandolinis, and every child who lived in the three-flats by the docks.
A war with the Brandolinis would burn all of them down by Sunday.
And five days of waiting would be five days of my mother and Paolo begging with no way out.
So I stepped out.
I walked back through the ballroom in the green dress, alone, past the spilled coffee and the guests who would not look at me.
Lorenzo was standing beside the stretcher while the doctor worked on his sister's face.
He looked up when I stopped in front of him.
Grey eyes, a white scar through his left eyebrow, and a coat with a coffee stain on the cuff.
"Which Santoro are you?" he said.
"The one you asked for," I said. "I'm Livia. Take me now. You don't have to wait five days."
His men went still.
"I asked for a hostage," he said. "Hostages don't volunteer."
"This one does."
For a moment he only studied me.
Then he nodded once at the door, and one of his men took my elbow.
I did not look back at the coat room.
The car was black and the seats were cold.
I sat in the back with my hands in my lap, and a man in front who never turned around.
My phone lit up on my knee.
It was my mother.
"Be brave," she had written. "It will be over soon."
I stared at it.
A shadow moved on my left, and I realized Lorenzo had climbed in beside me.
He was reading the screen over my shoulder.
"Over soon," he said in his quiet voice.
His eyes were on me now, not the phone.
"Does your mother think I kill hostages, Livia?"
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