She Left Her Cheating Fiancé, Then Met the Mafia Boss Who Wanted Her novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Slideshow
At her engagement party Ariella watches her fiancé's video with her maid of honor, drops her ring in his champagne and walks out, only to be grabbed on the sidewalk until a stranger in a black coat breaks the man's grip and calls her by a name she never gave him.
Sixty people watched my fiancé in bed with my maid of honor before anyone thought to turn the screen off.
It was supposed to be the photo slideshow.
Ethan's best man had stood up with a microphone and said, "Here's the happy couple through the years!"
The screen behind him showed us at the lake. Then at Ethan's mother's table. Then a video.
The date stamp said last Tuesday, the night I worked the late bakery shift.
I knew the sheets. I bought them on sale for thirty-nine dollars.
I knew the woman, too. She was standing three feet from me in a pink dress, holding my champagne.
Nobody moved. The video played on, and the sound was on, and it was loud.
Then someone found the cable and the screen went black.
Ethan reached me first. He took both my hands and held them. "Ari, breathe. Look at me, not at them."
"That's our bedroom," I said.
"I know. I know it is." His voice was gentle. "Let me get you out of here. Come downstairs with me."
He steered me toward the far door, the one that led to the stairs and out to the street.
He'd mentioned that door once this week. If it got loud, he'd said, I should take the stairs, because the elevators were slow.
I looked at him.
He had a fresh napkin in his fist, and he pressed it into my palm for my face.
Beside the door stood a man in a grey suit I had never seen. He wasn't holding a drink or talking to anybody.
He looked at Ethan and gave one small nod.
Ethan looked away from him.
My maid of honor was crying now. "Ari, it was one time, I swear, I was going to tell you."
"One time," I said. "On the sheets I bought."
"Ariella," Ethan said, "please. Downstairs."
I pulled my left hand out of his.
The ring was a small stone on a thin band. He'd made a speech about how it was all he could afford yet and how someday it would be bigger.
I walked to the nearest table, picked up Ethan's glass of champagne, and dropped the ring into it.
It sank to the bottom and sat there.
"Congratulations on your engagement," I told my maid of honor. "Keep the dress. You earned it."
Somebody near the buffet laughed out loud and then stopped.
Ethan's mother had her hand over her mouth.
"My things will be out of the apartment by Sunday," I said to Ethan. "Don't call me. Don't come to the bakery."
"Ari, you're not thinking."
"I'm thinking fine."
I picked up my coat and my bag.
So I left.
I did not take the stairs by that door. I walked past the grey-suited man and straight to the elevator, and I pressed the button over and over until it opened.
Behind me I heard Ethan shout my name, once, with something in it I had never heard from him before.
It sounded like fear.
The elevator was slow. The lobby was white marble and cold air, and it was empty except for a doorman.
I pushed through the glass doors onto the sidewalk and breathed in rain and exhaust.
My phone buzzed against my hip. Lark, my best friend, texting: I saw the stream. Where are you. I'm coming.
I was typing back when a hand closed around my arm.
It was the man in the grey suit. He had taken the stairs and beaten me out.
"There's a car for you, miss," he said. His grip was too tight, and he was already turning me toward a black sedan at the curb.
"Let go of me."
"It's already paid for."
"I said let go."
He didn't.
Then a second hand came down on his wrist, long and tattooed to the knuckles, and it closed.
The grey suit made a sound and his fingers opened.
The man who had taken hold of him was tall and broad in a black overcoat, with dark hair going silver at the temples. His eyes were black in the streetlight.
He didn't look at the grey suit. He looked at my arm, where the marks of the fingers were already red.
Then he looked at me.
"Walk away," he told the grey suit, quiet and flat.
The grey suit walked away.
The stranger still had my wrist. His palm was warm, and it did not feel like a grab. It felt like he had decided something.
"Thank you," I said. My voice shook. "I don't know who you are."
"No," he said. "But I know you."
He let go of me slowly.
"Miss Hayes," he said. "Get in my car."
I had not told him my name.
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