I Hunted His Mistress for Three Years, But She Was My Best Friend novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Earring Was Never Lost

Ettore admits he made the earring vanish on Dario's order, and Carina learns the mistress's apartment is leased in her own name.

Ettore did not take me home.

He drove across the bridge to Bay Ridge and parked inside a garage with the shutters already down.

The sign over the door said Corvino Auto Body, and nobody from Dario's side of the family ever came here.

Ettore ran the books for the whole family from a desk behind a rack of tires.

He turned on one lamp and stood with his back against the desk.

"Ask me," he said.

My voice came out steadier than I expected.

"How long have you known about her?"

"Two years."

"I didn't know it was Mirella until tonight," he said. "For two years all I knew was that there was a woman and that Dario was paying for her."

I put my purse down on a stack of invoices.

"The earring," I said.

His jaw moved.

"It was a pearl teardrop," I said. "I put it in my drawer. You know where it went."

"Dario called me that night," Ettore said. "He said you'd been through his car and he needed the thing gone before you showed it to anyone."

"And you came into my bedroom."

"While you were at the doctor's. I took it out of the drawer and I put it in the river."

I crossed the floor and slapped him as hard as I could.

His head turned with it and came back slowly.

He did not touch his cheek.

"They called me crazy for three months," I said. "And you stood at my bedside at the hospital and brought me flowers."

"Yes."

"You let me think I imagined it."

"Yes," he said. "I did that. I'm not going to tell you why it seemed right at the time, because there isn't a reason you'd accept."

My hand stung, and it felt good.

I wanted to hit him again, and I also wanted to sit down on the floor.

Instead I asked, "Why are you telling me now?"

"Because I watched you at that door tonight."

"You saw me stand there and listen."

"I saw you wash your face and walk back in with soup," he said. "You were a better liar than any man at that table."

I almost laughed.

"What do you want from me?" I said. "Everyone wants something."

"Nothing."

"Don't say that."

"I'll help you prove it," Ettore said. "In front of the table, with the capos watching and no one able to call you crazy. You don't owe me anything for it. That's the whole deal."

"Why?"

"Because I took the earring."

It was a poor answer, and it was the only honest one anyone had given me in three years.

I sat down on a tire.

"I want Dario to say it out loud with his men listening," I said. "I want her to say it too. I want my father's docks back, every deed, every signature. They were my dowry and he treats them as his."

"Then you have to keep playing crazy a little longer," Ettore said.

"I've had practice."

"You have to go home tonight, and sleep next to him, and kiss him in the morning."

I looked at my wedding ring.

It was a large, old Corvino diamond, and it felt cold.

"What do I look for?" I said.

Ettore opened the bottom drawer of the desk and took out a thin grey folder.

"I started this when I knew there was a woman," he said. "I never knew what to do with it."

He laid out a lease agreement, a utility bill and three months of bank transfers.

The apartment was in Park Slope.

The rent was four thousand a month, paid by a company I had never heard of, and the company was called Santoro Holdings.

I read it twice.

"Santoro," I said. "That's her family name."

"It's her name on the company. It isn't her name on the lease."

He turned the lease so I could see the last page.

At the bottom, over the line for the tenant, was a signature in black ink.

It said Carina Corvino.

I knew that handwriting.

Three years ago, on a Sunday, Dario had put a stack of papers on the kitchen counter and a pen on top of them.

"Charity forms for the church," he had said. "Sign where the tabs are, Cari, I'm late."

I signed every one without reading.

"That's mine," I said. "Ettore, I'm the one who rents her apartment."

"On paper you are," he said. "If a prosecutor opens that folder, or if the families do, the woman who set up the mistress's home is you."

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