Forbidden By Her Mafia Stepbrother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ring on the Plate
Wynne refuses the engagement at the Don's table with a four-finger bruise under her sleeve; her stepbrother sees it and tells his cousin to put his hand on the table.
On Sunday at noon, the Don announced Wynne's engagement to his nephew in front of two capos and her mother.
Wynne smiled through the whole speech.
She had pulled the sleeves of her gray sweater down to her knuckles before she came downstairs.
Under the left one, her wrist had turned black-purple overnight, in the shape of four fingers and a thumb.
Fabrizio had put them there on Friday, in the pantry hall, when she told him she would not wear his ring.
He had held on until she said she would think about it.
Now he sat beside her at the long dining table, cutting his veal, and he patted her knee under the cloth.
"Wynne is shy," the Don told the room.
He raised his glass.
Aurelio Sarcone was sixty, silver-haired and soft-voiced, and he looked at everyone fondly.
"To my niece-to-be."
The capos drank.
Her mother drank.
Her mother wore a pastel cardigan and a bracelet she never took off, and she did not look at her daughter once.
That morning the Don had moved the place cards himself.
He had put Wynne in the seat directly across from an empty chair.
That chair was Massimo's.
Massimo had been in Naples for three weeks, and nobody had told her he was coming back.
The dining room door opened at twelve forty.
He came in with his coat still on and a travel bag on one shoulder.
He was thirty-one, broad through the chest, with a short dark beard and hard dark eyes, and he had not smiled at Wynne in two years.
"You're late," Aurelio said warmly.
"The flight was." Massimo dropped the bag by the wall and sat down across from her.
His eyes went to Fabrizio's hand on the cloth, then to his father, then to her.
Wynne reached for the bread.
Her sleeve slid back.
The bruise showed from her wrist to the heel of her hand.
Massimo went completely still.
He did not look at the table, or the capos, or Fabrizio.
He looked at her wrist.
Wynne saw Aurelio's face then, and the old man was not looking at her at all.
He was watching his son.
"Heavens," her mother said brightly, and reached over to tug the sleeve back down. "She bruises like a peach, always has."
Her mother's fingers were cold.
"Fabrizio's a gentleman underneath, honey," Rosanna said, low. "He told me himself he'd never hurt you. Let's not make a scene."
"I didn't do anything," Fabrizio said, and grinned. "She walked into a door."
One of the capos laughed.
The ring box was already on the table by her plate, a small black velvet one Aurelio had set there that morning.
Wynne opened it.
The diamond was large and cold, and Fabrizio's name was already engraved inside the band.
She had lived in this house for two years.
She had said yes to every dinner and every dress and every rule Massimo gave her.
She had said yes to Fabrizio's hand on her back and to her mother's silence.
So she took the ring out of the box, set it on her mother's bread plate, and pushed back her chair.
"I won't marry him," Wynne said.
The room stopped.
Fabrizio's smile slipped.
The capos looked at their plates, and Rosanna's hand came to her bracelet.
"Sit down, sweetheart," Aurelio said gently.
"No."
"Wynne." Massimo's voice was quiet and flat. "Go upstairs."
She turned on him.
Two years of curfews and drivers and no, and now he was giving her orders in front of his father.
"You don't get to forbid me this one," she said. "Not today."
She walked out.
The pantry hall behind the dining room was dim and narrow, and the camera over the door blinked its small red light at her.
She had her hand flat on the wall when she heard him come out behind her.
She knew his step.
Massimo stopped a foot away.
He did not touch her.
"Who?" he said.
"Ask your cousin."
His jaw moved once.
He lifted her left hand by the fingertips, only the fingertips, and turned it into the light.
His thumb hovered over the black-purple edge of the mark and did not land.
"Friday," Wynne said. "Right here. He wanted me to say I'd think about it."
Massimo let her hand go.
"Stay in this hall," he said.
He went back through the door and closed it behind him.
She heard the chairs scrape and the room go quiet.
Then Massimo's voice, very even, carried clearly through the wood.
"Fabrizio. Put your hand on the table."
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