The Mafia Bride They Rejected Became an Underboss novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: The Wrong Sister
Eight years after being drugged and dumped, Vera walks into her father's wake with eight dusty kids, and as the family mocks her the Duarte underboss is announced.
Eight years ago, my brother Lorenzo dropped a pill into my champagne so Stefano Marchetti could put my ring on my sister's finger.
I watched him do it.
I just didn't know what I was watching.
We were at the Drake Hotel, under the chandeliers, at my own engagement gala.
Lorenzo handed me the glass and kissed my cheek.
"To the bride," he said.
The last thing I saw was Carina in the doorway, already wearing a white dress.
I woke up handcuffed to a bed in a motel outside Deming, New Mexico.
The sign through the window said Starlite. The door said Room 9.
A man named Boyd was pinning my shoulders to the mattress.
His breath smelled like chewing tobacco.
"Your brother says you're not coming home," he said.
There was a whiskey bottle on the nightstand.
I got one hand loose and swung it at his head.
It broke across his skull, and he went down across the carpet.
I dug the key out of his shirt pocket with bleeding fingers.
Then I walked out into the desert with no shoes.
I walked twenty miles.
Eight years later, I pulled into my parents' driveway in River Forest in a van that had just crossed four states.
My father's wake was already an hour in.
There were black cars lined all the way down the block.
I got out with desert dust caked on my jeans.
Eight kids spilled out behind me.
Tomás, twelve, came first, because he always came first.
Then Inés, and the twins Pilar and Paz, and Mateo, and Beni, and Luz.
Chuy was last, five years old, with a strip of beef jerky hanging out of his mouth.
"Shoes on," I said.
Nobody put their shoes on.
The front door was open.
Inside, the house smelled like lilies and cold cuts.
My father lay in an open casket under the front window.
I stopped walking.
He looked smaller than he ever had on the phone.
A woman in black silk turned around from the casket.
My sister Carina.
Her hair was blonde now. Her lashes were thick as spider legs.
On her left hand was a square emerald the size of a sugar cube.
I knew that ring.
Stefano's father had slid it onto my finger at dinner once, just to check the size.
Carina's mouth fell open.
Then it curled.
"Oh my God," she said, loud enough for the room. "Look what crawled back."
Every head turned.
Forty people in black.
Uncles. Cousins. Men from the Marchetti crew with their hands folded in front of them.
Chuy wandered past a man in a three-piece suit and wiped jerky grease on his trouser leg.
The man jerked back.
"Vera?"
My mother came out of the kitchen with a tray of cannoli.
She saw me and set the tray down very slowly.
She didn't come closer.
"You have some nerve," she said.
"I came to see Dad."
"Your father spent eight years ashamed of you."
Lorenzo pushed through the crowd.
He'd gone soft around the jaw. His suit was navy and expensive, and his hands wouldn't keep still.
He looked at me, then at the kids, and laughed out loud.
"Eight," he said. "Jesus, Vera. Did the trucker at least marry you first?"
A few people laughed with him.
Carina laughed hardest.
"She ran off with a trucker," she told the cousin beside her. "The night of her own engagement. We covered for her for years."
"That's not what happened," I said.
"No?" Carina lifted her hand so the emerald caught the light. "Then why am I wearing it?"
Stefano Marchetti came to stand behind her.
He was still handsome. Charcoal suit, green eyes, a watch worth more than my van.
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he looked at my jeans.
"You should go, Vera," he said quietly. "This isn't the day."
"It's my father's wake."
"And you're a mess," Lorenzo said. "Look at them. They're feral."
Beni had climbed onto the piano bench.
Luz was drinking straight from a crystal pitcher of lemonade.
"Get them out," Lorenzo snapped at the two guards by the door.
The bigger one grabbed my arm.
Tomás was on him in a second.
He sank his teeth into the man's wrist, and the guard howled.
"Tomás. Let go."
He let go. He didn't step back.
He stood between me and the guard with lemonade and blood on his chin.
Carina shrieked with laughter.
"She raised them in a barn!"
My mother pressed a hand to her pearls.
"Lorenzo, get them out of this house before the Duarte people come."
Lorenzo straightened his tie.
"Everybody listen up. The Duarte underboss is due any minute."
The room changed.
Men stood up straighter. Somebody hid the bourbon.
"Without the Duarte route, we're finished," Lorenzo said. "Nobody embarrasses this family today."
He turned his back on me.
The doorman leaned in from the porch.
"Mr. Lombardi. The Duarte car just pulled up."
"Carina, fix your face," Lorenzo said. "Stefano, with me. Nobody talks but me."
Carina dabbed at her lashes.
Stefano buttoned his jacket.
Lorenzo shot me a look over his shoulder.
"And somebody put her in the kitchen."
I brushed the dust off my knee.
"You don't need to put me anywhere," I said. "The Duarte underboss is already here."
Lorenzo laughed.
"Where?"
I looked him in the eye.
"You're looking at her."
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