My Mafia Husband Fed Me Birth Control, So I Took His Throne novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Iron Tablet
Antonia palms the tablet her husband hands her every morning, learns at a pharmacy counter it is birth control, then puts it on his council table in front of his men and walks out. Her uncle texts that he has a room ready.
Vincent stirred my coffee himself, the way he had every morning for two years.
He set the spoon on the saucer, slid the cup across the kitchen table, and put a small white tablet in my palm.
"Iron," he said. "For your blood."
"Yes, Doctor Strozzi."
He almost smiled. The scar through his left eyebrow moved, and he watched me raise my hand to my mouth.
I didn't swallow it.
I had a headache.
My doctor had said not to stack iron on top of vitamins, and that was the only reason I closed my fist.
I drank the coffee and let the tablet sit in my palm until he turned to the window.
Last Sunday my Uncle Carmine had come to dinner and hugged me hard at the door.
He'd handed me a jar of prenatal vitamins, the same brand as the month before.
Vincent had taken it from me and carried it into the kitchen himself.
"Big day?" I asked now.
"Council at noon." He picked up his jacket. "Eat something, Toni."
He kissed my forehead and left.
I closed my fingers over the tablet and put it in my coat pocket.
The pharmacy on Forest Avenue had a line to the door.
I waited behind a man buying cough syrup and a woman with a stroller.
When it was my turn I set the tablet on the counter and said, "Is it safe to take iron with prenatal vitamins? My husband gives me one of these every morning."
The pharmacist picked it up and turned it under the lamp.
She looked at the stamp on its edge, typed something, and read her screen.
Then she looked at me.
"Ma'am, this isn't iron."
"It's a white tablet. He said iron."
"It's a birth control pill." She said it low, but the woman with the stroller turned her head. "Norethindrone. Where did you get it?"
"My husband."
"Do you take it every day?"
"For two years."
The pharmacist's face changed.
"Honey," she said, "are you trying to get pregnant?"
I had taken eleven tests in two years.
I had sat on the edge of our bathtub with every one of them.
Every time, Vincent had come in, sat on the tile beside me, and said, "Next month."
I put the tablet back in my pocket and said, "Thank you," because I couldn't think of what else to say.
Strozzi's was already full when I went in through the kitchen door.
I bake there every morning at five. The cooks know me, and nobody looked up when I walked straight through to the back.
The council room is behind a wooden door with a frosted panel.
I heard Vincent before I touched the handle.
"Antonia stays on them until Serena is past three months," he said. "Nobody touches Serena. Not her, not the baby."
"And after the three months?" That was Paolo, his underboss.
"After, I decide."
Somebody laughed, and a chair scraped.
I opened the door.
Six capos sat around the long table with their plates of lunch. Vincent was at the head.
Serena Lucchese, his bookkeeper, sat on his right with her reading glasses on a chain.
A man's gray coat hung over the back of her chair.
She half stood when she saw me.
"Antonia, you look white. Sit, sit. Do you want water?"
She was already pouring it.
I walked to the head of the table and took the tablet out of my pocket.
I set it down in front of Vincent's plate.
"This is a birth control pill," I said. "I have been swallowing one every morning for two years. You put it in my hand."
Nobody moved. Paolo put his fork down.
Vincent didn't look at the tablet.
He looked at me.
"Antonia," he said.
"Eleven tests. You sat on the bathroom floor with me for every one of them."
Serena's water glass shook in her hand. "Antonia, I didn't know, I swear to God I didn't."
"I know you didn't," I told her, because I did. She looked sick.
I turned back to my husband.
"You told your men to keep me on them until she's safe. You decide what happens to my body, after."
"Not here," Vincent said, very quietly.
"Here is where you said it."
I pulled the ring off my finger.
It was tight, and I had to turn it. Six capos watched me do it.
I laid it on the table next to the pill.
So I stepped out.
I walked back through the kitchen and out the delivery door into the cold.
Nobody came after me.
I got as far as the curb before my phone buzzed.
It was my Uncle Carmine.
I hadn't called him.
Nobody in that room had left it before me.
The text said: I've heard. A room is ready at my house, kid. Bring the pills. And don't tell him where you are.
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