My Don's Friends Spoke Italian to Shut Me Out novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Good

Margo plays the recording for Cesare, who takes the phone, won't cancel Friday and never asks what it says, and a kiss in the dark ends when she stops it.

I waited until the driver had pulled away from Gallo's and the glass between the seats was up.

Then I took out my phone and said, "I need you to listen to something."

Cesare was loosening his tie.

He had a pale scar through his left eyebrow and a way of sitting very still when he was tired.

"Now?"

"Now."

I told him about the kitchen.

I told him about the cook's cold hands and the word Friday, and the port, and the man on the crane.

I did not tell him about the widow.

I couldn't get that one out of my mouth.

He held out his palm, and I put the phone in it.

I pressed play for him.

Tommaso's voice filled the back of the car, low and easy, with the clink of glasses under it.

Cesare listened with his head turned to the window.

His face didn't change.

When the laughing started, his jaw tightened once.

"Who translated this?" he asked.

"The cook."

"Did she tell you what Gaspare said about you?"

"She said he asked what would happen to the nurse."

He was quiet.

"Tommaso is like a father to me," he said. "He sat with me the night my father died."

"I'm not saying he didn't."

"Gaspare took a bullet for me when we were nineteen."

"Cesare."

"You don't know these men."

"I know what the cook told me."

"The cook is seventy-four and she has been frying Tommaso's veal for thirty years." He looked at me at last. "Why would she tell you this?"

"Because she's afraid, and because she likes me."

"Or because someone told her to say it."

I stared at him.

"Ask Gaspare," he said. "Ask Tommaso. Ask any of them what the toast was."

"They'll lie to my face."

"Then you'll know who lies."

"That is not a plan. That is how you get killed."

"Send me the file," he said.

I sent it.

He put his phone away and took my hand, and his was warm and dry.

"I'm going to the port on Friday," he said. "I'm going to sign what I'm told to sign. If I don't go, every captain I have will say the Don is afraid of his wife's friends in the kitchen."

"You didn't even ask me what else he said."

"You told me."

"I told you the part I could stand."

He watched me for a second.

Then he turned his face back to the window.

"Okay," he said.

That was all.

He did not ask me to play it again.

He did not ask what Tommaso had said about the signing, or what the papers were, or what any of it meant.

I told myself he didn't need to ask.

We didn't speak for the rest of the ride.

In the bedroom of the penthouse he took off his jacket and hung it up with great care.

I stood at the foot of the bed in my green dress with my arms crossed.

"You're angry," he said.

"I'm scared, and it's the same thing from where I'm standing."

He crossed the room.

He stopped so close that I could smell his soap.

"Nobody touches you," he said. "Not Gaspare, not Tommaso, not a man on a crane. I married you so nobody would."

"You married me so I wouldn't talk about what I saw in my ER."

"That too."

"That's not the same."

"No," he said. "It isn't."

His fingers came up under my chin.

I told myself I was going to push him away.

I put my hand flat on his chest and felt his heart going hard under the shirt, harder than his face.

"Margo," he said.

It was the first time he had said my name like it was something he was holding.

I kissed him.

I did it before I could decide not to, and he made a low sound in his throat and his hand slid into my hair.

He kissed me.

My back met the bedpost.

His mouth went from my lips to the corner of my jaw and down.

The zipper at the back of the green dress started to give.

Then I heard Bianca's voice in my head, saying eat your veal, and I pulled my face away.

"No," I said. "Not tonight. Not when I don't know what's in your head."

He stood there breathing.

Then he stepped back and ran a hand over his face.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"You said no."

He went into the bathroom, and I heard the shower come on.

I lay awake with my dress still half unzipped.

Around three in the morning I got up for water and saw a light under the door of his study.

I opened it an inch.

He was sitting at the desk in the dark with his phone against his ear.

The recording was playing again, very low.

His eyes were shut, and his lips were moving along with Tommaso's voice, shaping sounds he plainly didn't know.

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