Betrayed at the Altar, I Married a Powerful Rival novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Blisters

Federico dresses the blisters the canvas sneakers left and Gianna asks for a seat at Friday's port meeting, where the Ruggeris will present her stolen plan.

By ten that night I could feel my feet again, and I wished I couldn't.

Somebody had put me in a bedroom at the end of the east hall.

The wedding dress lay over a chair.

On the bed there was a grey sweater and a pair of drawstring pants, and both smelled like cedar and soap.

They were not my size.

I sat on the edge of the mattress and peeled off the canvas sneakers.

The backs of both heels had rubbed through to raw skin, and the socks were stuck to it.

I swore at the ceiling, quietly, and pulled one sock free.

Someone knocked twice.

"It's open," I said.

Federico came in with a metal first aid box and shut the door behind him with his heel.

He had taken off the jacket and tie.

His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and I saw the thin white scar that ran from his left wrist halfway up his arm.

"The housekeeper said you refused the nurse," he said.

"I don't take things from strangers anymore."

"I'm not a stranger. I'm your husband until next June."

"I'm sorry. Do the terms say you can come in my room?"

"They say I can't touch you." He set the box down on the bed. "They don't say what to do if you bleed on my grandmother's rug."

I looked at the floor.

There was a small red spot on the carpet beside my left foot.

"Fine," I said, and reached for the box. "I'll do it myself."

My fingers wouldn't close on the clasp.

The drug had left my hands clumsy, and the box slid out of them and into my lap.

Federico watched me try twice.

"That's the sedative," he said. "It wears off from the middle outward. Give it an hour."

"I don't have an hour. I have blood on a rug."

He sighed through his nose, knelt, and held out his hand.

"Foot."

"You said no touching."

"I said nobody in the house touches you. I'm also telling you to let me clean a wound, so that is the exception."

"You make a lot of exceptions for a man who wrote the rules four hours ago."

"They're good rules. I'm following them. Give me your foot."

I gave him my foot.

He took my heel in his palm, and the skin under his fingers felt warm.

He worked with a cotton pad and something that stung, and I bit the inside of my cheek.

"Who made you wear them?" he asked.

"Dario. He knelt and tied them himself."

"Did he know they'd do this?"

"They were stiff. He knew."

Federico didn't say anything.

He wrapped gauze around the heel, pressed the tape flat with two fingers, and finished.

Then his thumb stayed on my ankle after the bandage was done.

It stayed for the length of a breath, and I felt the pulse in his hand.

He took it away.

"Other one," he said, and his voice sounded rougher.

I told myself he was checking the tape.

He did the second heel the same way, quickly, and didn't look up.

When he was done, he sat back on his heels and closed the box.

"Tell me about the plan," he said.

"You said you heard me at the gate."

"I heard your name. I haven't heard the plan."

So I told him.

A port expansion for the Bridgeport dock warehouses, which sat on old fill that flooded every spring.

I had spent three months drawing new loading lanes and a drainage cut that would keep the third berth dry.

I had left the drawings in the Sabatini office for Dario to carry to the capos, because he said I shouldn't walk into a capo meeting.

Valentina carried them in instead.

She said she had drawn them herself.

"Nobody there asked her anything about them?" Federico said.

"Nobody asked a woman wearing a ten-thousand-dollar dress. They clapped."

His mouth moved.

It was almost a smile.

"The Ruggeris are coming here on Friday," he said. "They're presenting the plan to my family for approval. They need our signature to start building."

"Approve it," I said.

"I had intended to."

"Then don't."

"It's a good plan."

"It's my plan," I said. "And I want her to stand in front of your capos and explain it."

He tipped his head.

"What do you need?"

"A chair at the table. My own name on a card, under yours."

"They'll say the new wife has no business in the room."

"Then say the new wife is the only one in the room who can read a soil report."

Federico got to his feet.

He looked down at me, at his grey sweater on my shoulders and the bandages on my feet.

For the first time that day, nobody had told me what to wear or where to stand.

"Friday," he said. "You sit where she can see you."

He crossed the room and put his hand on the door.

"Lock this behind me," he said.

"I thought you said I was safe in your house."

"You are. Lock it anyway, so you know you can."

I locked it, and stood with my forehead against the wood, listening to him walk away down the hall.

He stopped outside the next door, the one that was his.

For a long time he didn't go in.

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