Chapter 5: What He Owed Her

Ignazio kissed me on both cheeks in the county parking lot and put the paper bag in my good hand.

"Sfogliatelle," he said. "For the boy, but they wouldn't let me bring them in."

"You saw Emilio?"

"Ten minutes before you. He's thin." He patted my cheek. "Friday, everything will be fine. You'll see."

He did not ask about my bandage.

He did not look at Tancredi at all.

Then his Lincoln pulled out, and my husband stood beside me in the evening light with his jaw set.

"Get in the car," Tancredi said.

I got in.

Nobody spoke on the drive, and nobody knocked on the east wing.

I did not go up the stairs.

I followed him down the hall to his study, and I did not ask if I could come in.

He poured a whiskey and did not drink it.

"Ignazio saw Emilio ten minutes ahead of us," I said. "He knew what time we'd be there."

"Don't."

"You told me to ask no questions in three years. I'm asking."

"Sabina."

"Who told my brother which door to use?"

He put the glass down very hard, and the whiskey jumped.

"I said don't."

"Or what?"

He crossed the room in three steps, and I did not back away.

His hand went to my throat, light, only resting there, and my pulse beat into his palm.

"Say it again," he said.

"Who told him?"

He kissed me.

It was not a kiss.

It was his mouth on mine, hard, with whiskey on his tongue, and I bit his lip, and he made a sound I had never heard from him.

My back hit the desk.

Papers slid off it onto the rug.

He lifted me onto the wood with the hand that was not in my hair, and my bandaged palm went flat against his chest.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Don's Wife Stopped Asking from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.