The Don's Widow Carries His Heir novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Make It Clean
On her sister's forged wire transfers, Lia's husband the Don orders her shot; at the river she tells the enforcer she's pregnant and makes him a deal, and his phone says the boss is down.
My husband ordered his men to shoot me in our front hall.
He didn't know I was carrying his child.
I'd known for twelve days.
The blood on Massimo's white shirt was still wet, and it wasn't his.
He stood on the marble with a gun hanging at his side.
Four of his men stood behind him.
None of them would look at me.
That was how I knew, before he said a word.
The house on Federal Hill was never quiet. Somebody was always laughing in the kitchen or yelling about the Sox.
Tonight it was so quiet I could hear the clock in the dining room.
"Lia."
He said my name softly.
"Marisa showed me the wires."
My little sister stood at the bottom of the stairs.
She was wearing my red dress.
The one with the low back that I'd worn to our first anniversary dinner. It had been hanging in my closet this morning.
"What wires?" I said.
"The widows' fund." Massimo's jaw went tight. "One point two million dollars, Lia. Five months. Every cent of it to Carbone Provisions."
"I've never touched that fund."
"From your laptop. With your password."
"Then somebody used my laptop."
"Don't." He lifted his free hand. "I gave you my name. I gave you this house. And you've been paying the people who shot my father in the street."
Marisa came down the last step and put her hand on his shoulder.
She rubbed it in a slow little circle.
"It's okay, baby," she told him, looking straight at me. "She always was the jealous one."
I almost laughed.
Three months ago she'd cried in my arms at two in the morning about how lonely she was.
Two months ago she'd asked me for the codes to the Castiglione safe houses.
"Just so I feel safe, Lia. You don't know what it's like out there alone."
I gave them to her.
A month ago she started borrowing my clothes.
Now she was borrowing my husband.
I kept both hands flat on my stomach.
I'd been doing that for four weeks without noticing.
"Massimo, look at me. Really look. Have I ever lied to you once?"
For one second something moved in his face.
I saw it.
Then Marisa's fingers tightened on his shoulder, and it was gone.
He turned his head to the tall man at the back.
"Nick."
Nick Galante stepped forward.
He'd been best man at our wedding. He'd carried a tray of my pastries up the church steps because the caterer dropped one.
"Take her out of the house," Massimo said. "Make it clean."
Nobody moved.
Then Nick took my arm.
His grip didn't hurt.
That was the worst part.
He walked me past the dining room, past the photo of our wedding on the side table, out the front door into the cold.
I didn't scream.
Screaming in that house had never saved anybody.
He put me in the passenger seat of his black Ford and drove down the Hill without a word.
The radio was off.
The heater ticked.
I watched Atwells Avenue go by in the dark. My bakery sign. The florist. The social club where Massimo's father died.
Nick drove across the city to Fox Point and pulled into the lot by the river.
The water was black and the far bank was all orange lights.
He turned off the engine.
He sat with both hands on the wheel.
"Get out, Lia."
I got out.
The wind off the river went straight through my sweater.
I walked to the railing on my own, because I wasn't going to let him drag me.
I heard his door. His shoes on the gravel.
I turned around before he could reach me.
"I'm pregnant."
He stopped six feet away.
"I had my first ultrasound on the fourteenth. I was going to tell Massimo on his birthday. I bought the little card and everything."
"Lia."
"Ask him what time the biggest wire went out that day."
He didn't answer.
His gun was in his hand now, pointed at the ground.
"I'm not asking you to believe me tonight," I said. "I'm asking you for forty-eight hours."
"For what?"
"I'll bring you the person who did it. With proof. You can put a bullet in me after that if I'm wrong."
The wind pulled my hair across my face. I let it.
"Marisa asked me for the safe-house codes in August," I said. "I gave them to her. If anyone's going to get hurt tonight, it's because of those codes. Not because of me."
Something changed in his eyes.
He looked over his shoulder at the river. At the empty lot. At the one car going by on the bridge.
Then he lifted the gun past me and fired twice into the water.
The shots cracked off the far bank.
I didn't flinch.
My knees did.
I grabbed the cold railing and held on.
"Forty-eight hours," he said. "You stay where I put you. You don't call your sister. You don't call your mother."
"Okay."
"You don't call him."
"Okay."
He put the gun away inside his coat.
He took it off and dropped it around my shoulders, and it smelled like smoke and somebody else's cologne.
"Get in the car."
I made it two steps.
His phone lit up in his hand.
He read the screen and all the color went out of his face.
"What?" I said.
He turned it so I could see.
"They hit Smith Hill. Boss is down. Rhode Island Hospital. Hurry."
Smith Hill was a safe house.
One of the four codes I'd given my sister.
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