My Fiancé Sacrificed Me for My Sister's Heart novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Door Behind the Last Rack

Nerina escapes through the wine cellar to the rival boss's club and asks for shelter. He says only a wife is beyond her father's reach, and she says yes.

I waited until the house was asleep, and then I walked out through the wine cellar.

Costanza and I found that door when we were children.

It opened behind the last rack, onto a coal chute that came out in the alley by the carriage house.

I took my coat and left my phone on the pillow.

Fabrizio had put a tracker in it the week he proposed. I had found it two days later and said nothing.

The cellar smelled like cold stone.

I climbed the chute on my hands and knees with the ring still on my finger.

At the top I pulled it off and dropped it down the chute behind me.

It rang once on the stone and was gone.

The alley was empty. Two of my father's men stood at the front gate, ten yards away, with their backs to me.

I walked the other way.

It took me an hour to reach the Falsetti club on the river, because I did not dare take a cab.

My father had called Ruggiero Falsetti a dog at every dinner I could remember.

He was the only man in Chicago my father could not order around.

That made him the only door I could knock on.

The club had no sign, only a steel door and a camera.

I knocked.

A guard in a black coat opened it and looked at my dress, my bare finger and my muddy shoes.

"We're closed."

"I'm Nerina Albertini," I said. "Ettore Albertini's daughter. I need to speak to Mr. Falsetti."

He laughed in my face.

"And I'm the Pope. Go home, sweetheart."

"Tell him the one who signed the waiver is at his door."

The laughing stopped.

Everybody in the Families knew what the waiver was for. A second man came to the door, then a third.

They took me up a steel staircase to a long room above the dance floor.

At the far end of it, a man stood at a window with his back to me.

He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow and no jacket.

"Send her in," he said.

He turned around.

He was tall, with black hair and a short beard, and a scar ran through his left eyebrow.

I looked up at his head, as I do with everyone.

Over it floated the number 35.

My mouth went dry.

He was thirty-four years old.

"Which daughter?" Ruggiero Falsetti asked.

"The younger one."

"The one nobody mentions." He leaned on the edge of the desk. "You're engaged to Tedaldi."

"Not tonight."

He looked at me for a long moment, and I made myself look back.

"Tell me why you're here," he said.

So I told him.

I told him about the dinner, the doctor, the study door and the black folder.

I told him I had signed.

I said it flat, with my hands in my coat pockets, because if I took them out he would see them shake.

"Three days," I said. "Saturday is my birthday. They will take my heart out on Saturday and put it in my sister."

"They can't," he said. "Blood relatives are protected."

"Not after you sign. I signed."

He closed his eyes for a second.

"Why do you think I'd help you?" he said. "Your father has wanted my docks since before you could read."

"That's why."

I took a step toward the desk.

"My father's men can't walk into your house without starting a war," I said. "Tell me I'm wrong."

He said nothing, which told me I was right.

"You don't have to like me," I said. "You only have to let me stay behind your door until Saturday has passed."

"Sanctuary," he said slowly. "You know what it costs?"

"I don't."

"A guest at my door is safe from your father for one night. After that, he can ask the Families to rule on it, and they will give you back to him." He picked a lighter off the desk and turned it over once. "There is exactly one thing in our law your father can't override."

"What is it?"

"A wife."

The room went very quiet.

"A wife answers to her husband's Family," he said. "Her own blood can't touch her. Not Ettore, not a doctor, not a waiver."

I heard it clearly, and it still took me a moment to understand.

"You want to marry me."

"I want your father's face when he hears it," Ruggiero said.

He said it with no warmth at all. It was an honest answer, and I trusted it more than I would have trusted a kind one.

"It would be a contract," he said. "One year, or until Tedaldi and your father are finished, whichever comes first. Separate rooms. Nothing between us except what the Families have to see."

"And what do you get?"

"The Albertini don's blood daughter on my side of the table." He put the lighter down. "Every capo in the city will wonder what she knows."

I almost laughed.

I knew nothing at all. I only knew how long people had left.

I looked at the number over his head one more time.

Thirty-five. He had a year.

I did not know yet whether that was the reason I was going to say yes, or the thing I was going to fix.

"When?" I said.

"Before the sun comes up. My priest is awake, and my chapel is downstairs." He picked up his jacket from the chair. "If you want to change your mind, you have until the sun comes up."

"I won't."

He looked at me properly for the first time.

"Then take that coat off," Ruggiero said. "You're about to be a Falsetti, and you're covered in coal dust."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend