My Don Married My Pregnant Sister So I Choose His Mafia Rival novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Witness

Ettore tells the families he was on the pier the night Papa died but didn't shoot him, marries Marcella at city hall with Assunta as witness, and at Todt Hill Cosimo and Angelina are waiting in Papa's study.

The silence went on long enough for me to hear the candles hiss.

Ettore folded his newspaper in half, then in half again.

He tucked it into his jacket pocket and stood up.

He was taller than I'd remembered, and he took his time about it.

"Mrs. Varrone," he said to Ornella, polite as a funeral director. "You've wanted to say that in a church for two years."

"Because it's true."

"It's half true." He looked past her, at the front pews, at the Bay Ridge boss and the old man from Howard Beach. "I was on the St. George pier the night Cardone died."

A murmur went through the cathedral.

"I got there after the shots. I didn't fire them." He buttoned his jacket. "If any man here thinks I'm lying, he knows where I live. I've never moved."

Nobody said a word.

The Bay Ridge boss's sons kept their hands inside their jackets.

Ettore didn't even look at them.

He looked at me.

"You still want an answer, Captain?"

"I asked a question in front of five hundred people," I said. "I'd like one."

"Then let's go somewhere with fewer of them."

He offered me his arm.

I took it.

We walked up the center aisle together, the wrong bride and the wrong man, past every family that had buried someone in the war.

At the altar, Cosimo hadn't moved.

His face was white as the candles.

"Marcella," he called after me. "You walk out that door with him, you don't come back."

I didn't turn around.

"I already left, Cosimo. You were asleep."

Somebody in the Howard Beach pews snorted.

The cathedral doors opened on June sun, and Ettore's driver was already holding the back door of a black car.

Ettore got in after me and shut it.

For a second it was just the leather and the cold air and his knee an inch from mine.

"You planned this," he said.

"Since five this morning."

"That's not planning. That's a nervous breakdown with stationery."

I almost laughed.

I didn't.

"I want terms," I said.

"I'd be insulted if you didn't."

I took the folded wedding program out of my coat pocket.

There was a pen in his hand before I asked for one.

I turned the program over and wrote on the back of it, in the same neat hand as the photograph.

"One. My father's chair at the table. The Varrones have held it in trust for two years. I want it back, and I want it in my name, not yours."

"No woman has ever sat at that table."

"Then I'll be the first. Two. My piers and my launches stay mine. Your family doesn't touch them, your cargo doesn't cross them without my say."

"Fair."

"Three. A year. Then a quiet divorce, and you get peace on the Staten Island piers for good. Four." I looked at him. "Separate rooms."

He didn't even blink.

"Now mine."

"You get one."

"I only need one." He took the program from me, wrote a single line under mine and turned it so I could read it.

Wife lives under husband's roof until Cosimo Varrone stops being dangerous.

"That could be forever," I said.

"Then you'd better work fast."

"I have my own house."

"You have a house your ex-fiancé thinks he owns, guarded by nobody, on a hill with one road up it." His voice didn't rise. It got quieter.

"He just lost his bride, your piers and his face in front of the families. Men like Cosimo don't take that to confession. They take it out on whoever's closest."

The car turned onto the bridge.

I watched the harbor go by under us, gray and glittering.

"Fine," I said. "Under your roof."

He signed.

I signed under him.

Then, because I'd been holding it since the choir loft, I asked.

"Why were you on the pier that night?"

He was quiet for a long time.

"I'll tell you that when you trust me," he said. "Today I'll tell you something else."

"What?"

"I held him." He looked out his own window, not at me. "He was already going. I kept my hand on the holes and talked to him till the end."

My throat closed.

"He said your name," Ettore said.

I turned to the glass so he wouldn't see my face.

He didn't touch me.

He handed me a clean white handkerchief without looking, and kept looking at the river until I was done.

City hall had a line.

Ettore Sarno, Don of the Red Hook docks, stood in it like everybody else, behind a couple in matching sneakers.

Assunta met us on the steps in her navy church hat.

She'd taken a cab from the cathedral and beaten us by ten minutes.

She looked Ettore up and down, from his gray temples to his polished shoes.

"So you're the murderer."

"Allegedly, signora."

"Hm." She poked his chest with one finger. "You eat?"

"When I'm fed."

"You'll eat Sunday. Do you go to Mass?"

"Christmas and funerals."

"Then you'll go more, because there's going to be a funeral if you hurt her." She turned to me. "He's got a nice face. Shame about the nose."

"I broke it on a rope when I was twelve," Ettore said.

"Good. A man should have one honest scar."

The clerk read the vows in a flat Queens voice.

Assunta signed as our witness, pressing so hard the pen went through the paper.

When the clerk said he could kiss the bride, Ettore lifted my hand instead and kissed my knuckles, right over the rope calluses.

His mouth was warm.

My knees did something stupid.

"For the paperwork," he murmured.

"The paperwork doesn't care."

"I'm not doing it for the paperwork."

His driver took us across the harbor to Todt Hill so I could pack.

Ettore's men pulled in behind us in a second car.

The front gate of Papa's house stood open.

I never left it open.

Cosimo's silver car sat in the driveway, still trailing white ribbons from the cathedral.

The front door was unlocked.

The light was on in Papa's study.

I walked in first, before Ettore could stop me.

Cosimo sat in my father's leather chair with his feet on my father's desk.

Angelina was perched on the arm beside him, still in my wedding dress, eating sugared almonds from the favor bowl.

"Welcome home," Cosimo said. "Though I should tell you, it isn't yours."

He tapped a stack of papers on the blotter.

"This house and those piers come with the Cardone bride." He smiled at Angelina. "And I married one this morning."

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