The Mafia Don's Vetoed Bride novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Nobody Checks My House

Cassio gives Vivi a room and one rule, and kneels to check her swollen knees. Silvia calls, sweet and too smooth, and asks her to come to Lugano alone; behind her Vivi hears her mother's voice.

Cassio's house stood on a bluff over the Jersey shore, with a gate, a long gravel drive and nobody on the porch.

The housekeeper had made up a room for me before we arrived.

It had a bed, a lamp and a bathroom with a tub.

It had nothing on the walls.

Cassio stood in the doorway with his hands in his coat pockets.

"One rule," he said. "You sleep under my roof, you don't leave it without telling the man at the door."

"I'm not your prisoner."

"No. You're the woman Edoardo Mancuso wants back by Saturday. He has sixty men and a good memory for faces."

"Fine," I said. "Then I have one too."

"Go on."

"No lies in this house. I've had enough of them to last me."

He took a moment with that.

"Ask me anything," he said.

"Why were you watching Edoardo for eight months?"

"He's been buying up the port a lease at a time. Your family's docks are the last piece he doesn't own."

"So you watch the people who could stop him."

"I watch the people who could sell him the last piece."

It was an answer, and I could tell there was more behind it.

I was too tired to push past it.

"Sit down before you fall down," he said.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

He crossed the room, and then he knelt on the floor in front of me, in his good coat.

"Your knees," he said.

I looked down.

They were purple and swollen under the hem of my dress, rubbed raw where the wood had been.

I had stopped feeling them hours ago.

"They're fine."

He took the left one in his hand to look.

His palm was warm and dry, and his thumb stopped just under the bruise.

I felt it from there all the way up my spine.

I thought, he doesn't mean anything by this.

I kept thinking it while he turned my leg a little toward the lamp.

His hands were steady, and his breathing was not.

"You'll want ice," he said, without looking up.

"You'll want to take your hand off my leg."

He did, at once.

A muscle moved in his jaw.

I didn't say what I was thinking, which was that I had wanted him to leave it there a moment longer.

The housekeeper brought ice wrapped in a towel and left it on the nightstand.

Cassio stood and went to the door.

"Eat something," he said. "Then sleep. Tomorrow we work out what Edoardo does next."

The door closed.

I sat holding the ice to my knee and staring at the wall.

My phone buzzed against the quilt.

It was Silvia.

I let it ring four times.

I thought of every call from her in nine years, and how many times I had picked up on the first ring with a smile.

Then I answered.

"Vivi!" Her voice was thick with tears. "Oh, thank God. Edoardo said you were upset, and I couldn't stand not knowing where you were."

Behind her, a baby started to cry, thin and furious.

"I'm fine," I said.

"You're not fine. Your mother, Vivi. I can't even say it. I wanted to be at the funeral, but the doctor won't let me travel yet."

I closed my eyes.

She was so good at this.

She said it in the warm, shaky voice I had trusted for nine years.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"At my aunt's house in Switzerland. It's a long story. The baby was early."

"What baby?"

There was a very short silence.

"A friend's baby," she said. "I'm helping. I'm just so tired, Vivi."

I let that one stand.

I put the ice back on my knee and kept my voice soft.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you."

"Don't be silly. You've never let me down once."

I almost laughed.

"Come to me," she said. "Please. I don't want you alone in that house with all of them. Come to Lugano. Thursday. And don't tell anyone, Vivi. Not Edoardo, not your brothers."

"Not anyone?"

"Especially not him. Promise me."

The baby had stopped crying.

I could hear her breathing, and underneath it, very faintly, a woman's voice saying something I couldn't make out.

A voice I knew.

I gripped the phone harder.

"I'll come," I said. "I'll be there Thursday."

"I knew you would."

She hung up.

I sat very still and played the sound back in my head.

It had been my mother, asking if the bottle was warm.

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