I Hunted His Mistress for Three Years, But She Was My Best Friend novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Expense Reports
Dario shames Carina in front of his men, then she overhears her best friend and her husband in a hospital room, and walks back in smiling.
My husband read three years of my evidence out loud to his men, and every page was an expense report.
It was Sunday lunch at our house.
Eleven of his capos sat at the long table eating the veal I had cooked.
"Hotel Meridian, four nights in March," Dario said, holding up the statement I had printed. "Client dinners, Carina. Rooms for the men from Palermo."
Somebody laughed into his wine.
"Careful," Dario's cousin said. "The Donna's hunting again."
That was what they called it behind my back, and now they said it to my face.
The earring had come first, and the hotel charges second.
I had found the earring on the passenger seat of Dario's car, a pearl teardrop that was not mine.
I put it in my jewelry drawer, and a week later the drawer was empty.
Dario said there had never been an earring.
I knew what I had found.
Three months ago I had swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills in front of him, hoping he would shout her name.
He had shouted for the doctor instead.
When I woke he held my face and said, "Carina, there is no one else. What do I have to do to make you believe me?"
His family said I had lost my mind.
The family doctor told me to stop seeing ghosts and get some sleep.
By now even I wondered if the woman I could never find was something I had made up.
Only Mirella never wondered.
Mirella Santoro had been my best friend since we were fourteen.
She held me through the worst nights and said, "You're not crazy. I believe you."
She said it again that Sunday, but not at the table.
At the table, when Dario finished reading, she looked down the length of the room at me and shook her head gently.
"See, Cari? You're doing it again."
I dropped my eyes to my plate.
The men around the table watched the Don's wife take her lesson.
Two days later Mirella went into the hospital with stomach pain.
I made her chicken broth with the little pasta she loved and carried it up to her room in a steel thermos.
The door was open a hand's width.
I heard Dario before I saw him.
His voice was rough, a voice I had not heard since his father's funeral.
"Mirella, I can't keep doing this. It's you I love. I'm going to tell Carina."
I stopped with my hand on the frame.
Through the gap I saw Mirella sit up in bed and pull a fruit knife off her dinner tray.
She laid the blade flat against her own neck.
"No. You can't tell her."
"After my parents died, Carina is the reason I'm still alive."
"If she finds out her husband and her best friend have been sleeping together, how is she supposed to keep living?"
Dario's face changed.
He crossed the room in two steps, took the knife out of her fingers and pulled her against his chest.
He did not say anything else.
I put both hands over my mouth so that no sound could get out.
Three years.
Three years of trackers and bank statements and strange women followed across Brooklyn, and the one I wanted had been bringing me casseroles.
I backed down the corridor and found a bathroom.
I ran the cold tap and splashed my face again and again.
I looked in the mirror until the woman in it showed nothing at all.
Then I made my decision, and it was one plain sentence.
I would not scream, and I would not leave yet.
So I picked up the thermos and walked back in smiling.
Dario was in the chair beside her bed, one hand resting on the blanket.
Mirella saw me and her whole face brightened.
"Cari, sweetheart, you're finally here."
She took the thermos, unscrewed the lid and breathed in the steam.
"Oh, that smells amazing. Nobody takes care of me the way you do."
"Eat it while it's hot," I said.
I kissed her cheek.
I kissed my husband's cheek too, and he squeezed my hand and said I looked tired.
Every March ninth Mirella came down with the flu, turned off her phone and saw nobody.
I thought of that for no reason as I stood there, and then I let it go.
When I walked out, the corridor had a man in it.
Ettore Corvino, Dario's half-brother, stood against the opposite wall with his black coat folded over one arm.
I had no idea how long he had been there.
"I'll drive you home," he said.
"Dario's driver is downstairs."
"Dario's driver reports to Dario."
His eyes went to my hands.
"You can stop pretending with me, Carina," he said quietly. "I watched you hold your mouth shut at that door."
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