My Husband Called Me a Trophy Wife, So I Saved the Mafia Don Instead novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Sunday Table

Giulia welcomes the new doctor and the family eats Teo's cooking, but halfway through dinner Luca's pulse falls apart and he whispers that he has been dosed again.

By Sunday evening I had slept four hours in a guest room with a guard outside the door.

Luca's rule came down through the house by noon.

The kitchen was Teo's now, and only Teo's.

Giulia Fontana took it better than I expected.

She found me in the hall an hour before dinner with a tin of almond biscotti in her hands.

"You must be the doctor," she said. "I'm Giulia. Luca's sister."

She was thirty-five, small and dark-haired, with pearl earrings and a gentle voice.

"Dr. Audrey," I said. "I'm only here to look at his heart."

"Thank God," she said, and her eyes filled.

"He won't listen to me. He hasn't eaten properly since March. I've made him soup every week and he sends it back."

She pressed the tin into my hands.

"Make him eat something. Please. You're the first person he's let near him in months."

"I'll do my best."

She hugged me, quickly and hard, and I smelled orange blossom on her collar.

I had not been hugged by a woman who meant it in a long time.

I thought, *I like her.*

That was all I thought.

The dining room seated twelve and held six.

Luca sat at the head, in a charcoal jacket, with a color in his face I knew was borrowed.

I sat at his right, the place he had chosen for me, and I felt every pair of eyes at the table.

An old man with a cane was Luca's uncle.

A heavy cousin sat across from him, chewing and watching.

Two men from the family's business sat near the end.

Giulia took the chair nearest the kitchen door.

She stood up every few minutes to pass something, fix someone's napkin, refill someone's glass.

Teo carried in the dishes himself, and he set each one down with a glare at the room.

"Roast chicken," he announced. "Potatoes. Greens. I made them and nobody else touched them."

"Teo," the uncle said. "Since when do you cook?"

"Since the boss hired a doctor, and the doctor said so," Teo said.

Luca's mouth twitched.

I watched every hand at that table.

The uncle's hands shook with age, and the cousin's were greasy with chicken.

Giulia's were quick and soft, and she touched every plate that went past her.

Luca ate a little.

I had made him promise me three bites of everything, watching each one.

I tracked his breathing too, and the color under his collar, and the way his left hand lay flat on the cloth and did not move.

"Doctor," the uncle said, leaning toward me. "What exactly is wrong with my nephew?"

"I won't know for a few days."

"Is it serious?"

"It's his heart," I said. "It's always serious."

Giulia laughed and reached across to squeeze my wrist.

"Don't scare Uncle. He's eighty, and he'll tell the whole parish."

"I'm eighty-one," the uncle said sourly.

Everyone laughed.

It was the warmest table I had sat at in years.

I felt something unfamiliar loosen in my chest, and I distrusted it at once.

Luca put down his fork.

He did it slowly and with both fingers.

I looked at his hand on the cloth.

It was trembling, a fine fast tremor, and he pressed it flat to hide it.

"Luca," I said, in the voice of a doctor making small talk. "Give me your wrist. I want to check something."

He gave it to me without a word.

I put two fingers on his pulse under the edge of the tablecloth, and the room went on talking around us.

The beats were no longer in pairs.

They were fast, then missing, then fast, then not there at all for the length of a held breath, and I felt my own stomach drop.

His skin had gone cold.

"Doctor," Luca said quietly, so that only I could hear. "Tell me the truth."

"It's bad."

"How bad?"

"Say nothing. Smile at your uncle."

He smiled at his uncle.

It was a terrible smile, and nobody saw it.

Across the table, Giulia filled a glass with water and set it by his plate.

"Drink something, Luca. You look pale."

"In a moment," he said.

"Luca."

"In a moment, Giulia."

Under the cloth his hand turned in mine and held on.

"I've been dosed again," he said, so softly I almost missed it.

"That's not possible," I whispered. "Teo cooked everything. We watched every dish."

"I know," Luca said.

His grip tightened, and then it began to shake.

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