The Mafia Wife's Revenge novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Braille
Three years after he taught her braille, Helena hears what her husband really wrote in her palm, and is made to sign over her life's work.
The day my hearing came back, I walked in on my husband's men laughing about me.
For three years I had been deaf, blind and unable to speak.
A week before the trial for my mother's death, someone tied me to a chair, stabbed my eyes, cut my throat and pierced my eardrums.
My husband, Don Damian Keane, found me on the garage floor and held me until I stopped trying to split my head open on the wall.
He taught me braille, one letter at a time, written into my palm with his finger.
He told me not to be afraid.
He told me I had won the trial.
Then he took me to nine countries to find a cure.
At the ninth clinic, light came back into my left eye.
Two days later I heard a nurse say my name.
I didn't wait to tell anyone.
I tracked Damian's phone to a hotel on West 44th Street and rode up in the elevator shaking with joy.
The private room was at the end of the hall, and its door stood open a crack.
My hand rose to push it, and a man's laugh stopped it in the air.
"Boss, you wrecked your own wife to keep Camilla safe. Fine. But you taught her 'I will never forgive' as 'I forgive'?"
"I was in the courtroom that day. I nearly fell off my seat."
"She'll die thinking her mother was killed by a stranger. And she wrote Camilla a letter of forgiveness herself."
Every laugh went into my new ears.
I put my eye to the gap.
Damian sat in the middle of the leather sofa with Camilla curled in his arms.
Camilla had been my best friend for ten years.
She had been Damian's mistress for five of them.
Damian looked down at her and spoke in the calm voice I knew best.
"Her mother is dead, and nothing brings her back. I paid the best surgeons for Helena that same night. I owe her nothing more."
He kissed Camilla's hair.
"But Camilla has waited five years and never had a name. That, I do owe her."
I wanted to push the door open and scream that I could see him.
I wanted to scream that I could hear every word.
I bit down on my tongue until I tasted blood.
One man stood alone at the window, with his back to the room.
He was the only one who wasn't laughing.
He turned his head and saw me through the gap.
"Boss," he said, flat and quiet. "She's at the door."
The door swung open, and the laughter died.
"How did she get here?"
"Did she hear us?"
"Relax," the one with the lisp said. "She's a deaf, blind mute. Damian goes home tonight, scribbles a few dots in her hand, and she believes whatever he wants."
They all breathed out and looked at me.
The man from the window walked out first.
He did not look at me once.
Damian stood, set Camilla aside and took my hand.
"Enough for tonight," he told them.
His grip squeezed hard at the stairs and eased near the door.
That was the rule he had made for me.
Tight meant down.
Loose meant almost out.
Outside he put his jacket over my shoulders and opened the car door.
He waited until I was settled before he shut it.
For one second I wished that I had dreamed all of it.
Then he opened the front passenger door and lifted Camilla into the seat.
He buckled her belt and tucked a blanket over her knees.
I sat in the back and watched him do for her what he had always done for me.
We drove to her apartment first, and he carried her up the stairs.
When he came back, there was lipstick smeared on his collar and her perfume on his neck.
So I kept my mouth shut and let him think I was still blind.
At home I pressed the braille slate on my lap and wrote one question.
"The day of my trial, Damian, was the braille you taught me right?"
That is what I wrote, and I felt him read it.
He took my finger and pressed his answer into my palm.
"Of course, honey."
Then he asked why I had come to the hotel.
I wrote that I had missed him.
He smiled and brought a folder from his study.
"Five years married," he wrote in my palm, dot by dot. "Half of the company, in your name. A gift. Sign here."
I looked at the first page with my one good eye.
The title said, Transfer Agreement for All Design Works Created by Helena Ashworth.
The line for the receiving party said Camilla Lowe.
Damian folded my fingers around the pen.
"I'll guide you," he wrote. "Just like I taught you."
His hand closed over mine, and he wrote his own words across the page with my fingers.
I voluntarily transfer all my works to Camilla Lowe.
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