The Don's Wife Died With His Secret Heir novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Sunday Table
A boy calls the Don Papa at the family table, Santo looks to his consigliere before answering his wife, and she decides to die. She calls Mauro.
The priest had just finished blessing the bread when a little boy walked into our dining room and called my husband Papa.
Twenty-two people sat at the Sunday table.
Eleven of them were the capos of the five families and their wives, and every one of them stopped chewing.
I was holding a pregnancy test in my purse.
I had taken it that morning in the bathroom of our bedroom, and I had planned to tell Santo over dessert.
The boy was about three years old.
He had dark curls and a little navy suit, and he ran past my chair without a glance at me.
Behind him came a woman in a green dress, walking slowly, with her chin up.
I knew her name from the bank statements I had once been told not to read.
Nadia Rinaldi.
She stopped at the empty seat beside Santo, the one that had been set for nobody, and waited to be told she could sit.
Santo did not look at me.
He looked down the table at Ottavio Grasso.
Ottavio was the consigliere, fifty-two years old, silver at the temples. He had walked me down the aisle because my father had died.
Ottavio gave him the smallest nod.
Only then did my husband turn to his wife.
"Alessia," Santo said. "Nadia and the boy will eat with us from today."
My voice came out steady, and I was proud of that.
"Whose boy is that?"
The boy climbed onto Ottavio's knee without being asked.
Ottavio spoiled every child in the family, and this one knew it.
Ottavio settled him there and put one hand on his back without looking down.
The boy had a small fold at the top of his left ear.
I noticed it because I was looking anywhere except at Santo.
"Whose boy is that?" I said again.
"Mine," Santo said.
A fork touched a plate somewhere.
One of the wives stared very hard at her wine.
"He's three," I said. "We have been married four years."
"I know how long we have been married."
"Did you know when she was pregnant? Did you know on our anniversary, when you gave me the pearls?"
"Not here," Santo said.
"You brought her here."
Nadia lowered her eyes in a way that looked practiced.
Santo's jaw tightened, and he spoke so everyone could hear him.
"This is my house, and I decide who sits at my table. You will not question me in front of my men."
The men looked at their plates.
Nobody at that table was going to say a word for me.
I put my napkin on the cloth and stood up.
"Then I'll leave your table."
"Sit down, Alessia."
"I'm leaving your house."
Santo did not raise his voice, which was worse.
"You leave this house when I say you leave it."
"I'm your wife."
"Yes," he said. "And nobody leaves a Don."
I picked up my purse, the one with the test in it, and walked out of the dining room.
Nobody stopped me.
That was the first thing I understood on the way down the hall: nobody had to.
There were two men at the front door, and they had been told something before I got there.
One of them said, "The Don asks that you wait inside, signora."
Ottavio caught up with me at the foot of the stairs.
He had left the boy in Nadia's lap and come after me at nearly a run, and I let him take my elbow.
"Alessia, listen to me." He pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it into my hand, because I had not known I was crying. "He's a proud fool. He will be on his knees by Thursday."
"He said it was his."
"He said what he thought he had to say in front of the families." His voice was low and kind. "Let me handle him. Go upstairs, lie down, and don't do anything tonight. You have always trusted me."
"I have."
"Then trust me now. Give me a day."
I looked at the doors at the end of the hall, and at the two men who were not going to let me through them.
Then I looked at Ottavio's tired, gentle face, and said what he wanted to hear.
"One day."
He squeezed my hand and went back to the dining room.
I climbed the stairs and locked our bedroom door from the inside.
I sat on the edge of the bed, and I made the decision in one plain sentence.
A Don's wife could not leave, so I would die.
I took out my phone and called Mauro, the boatman who ran the family yacht and the only man in that house who ever asked how I was.
"Mauro," I said when he answered. "I need you to help me die on Thursday."
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