The Don Played Broke to Test Me, So I Left With His Baby novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Count It Out

She wakes in the Lombardi house and makes the Don count her eight months of wages onto the table in front of his capos, then finds the tablet in her pocket is not a laxative.

I woke up in a bed with a canopy and a doctor holding my wrist.

The ceiling was painted with gold leaf.

"Your heartbeat is steady," the doctor said. "The baby's is too. Two sleeping pills won't hurt either of you."

I let my breath out and put both hands on my stomach.

Cesare was in the chair by the window.

He was still in the camel coat, and he had not taken his eyes off me.

"You've been out six hours," he said. "I didn't leave."

"Where am I?"

"My house."

"Of course it is."

The doctor gathered his things and left without a word.

Cesare stood up and came to the foot of the bed.

"I know how it looks, Jo."

"It looks like eight months."

"I needed to know you weren't with me for the name."

"You said that already, in the doorway of my apartment, in front of six men and your sister."

His jaw tightened.

"My father spent his whole life being loved for the wrong reasons. I wasn't going to marry a woman who wanted the house and the cars."

"So you took the house and the cars away and watched what I did."

"Yes."

"And what did I do?"

"You stayed."

"I paid," I said.

He said nothing.

"Thirty-eight thousand four hundred dollars," I said. "Tips and wages from two jobs. I kept a list."

"Jo."

"I want it back. Every dollar. Today."

He looked at me for a moment, then went to the desk and opened a drawer.

He wrote a number on a slip of paper and signed it.

"That's a hundred thousand," he said.

"I said thirty-eight thousand four hundred."

"Take the hundred. Take the whole house if you want it."

"I want what I paid, and I want it counted out where your people can see it."

Something crossed his face and was gone.

"Counted out where?"

"Wherever you keep them."

He kept them in the dining room.

It was a long room with a table for twenty, and six men in dark suits sat at it with coffee in front of them.

They stood up when Cesare came in.

They did not stand for me.

I had put on my own coat and shoes, and the pocket of the coat still held the tablet from the bottle cap.

I walked to the head of the table and stopped beside Cesare's chair.

"Ladies and gentlemen," I said, "your Don asked me to marry him this morning."

Nobody moved.

"For eight months he told me his family had thrown him out and his enemies were hunting him. I worked two jobs and sent every dollar to the men he said he owed."

An old man at the far end put down his cup.

"There were no men," I said. "It was a test. I passed it, and he's proud of that."

"Jo," Cesare said quietly.

"Count it out," I told him.

For a long moment he looked at me, and I saw him decide.

He turned to the man on his left. "Bring me thirty-eight thousand four hundred dollars."

"Boss, in cash?"

"In cash. Now."

The man left the room.

Nobody spoke while we waited.

The old man at the far end kept his eyes on the tablecloth.

Another one stared at his own hands.

The money came in a canvas bag, in stacks with paper bands.

Cesare counted it out onto the table himself, one stack at a time, in front of every man there.

I did not touch it until he had finished.

Then I took only what I'd paid and put it in my coat.

"The rest stays here," I said.

"It's yours," he said.

"I didn't earn it. I earned that."

He closed his hand over the slip of paper and put it in his pocket.

"Where will you go?"

"Home."

"That apartment is a hole."

"It's the hole I paid for."

His men stood very still.

I turned and walked out through the long room, past the six of them, and nobody tried to stop me.

Cesare followed me into the hall.

"Jo. The pills my sister gave you."

I stopped.

"I would have stopped you before you took any. I swear it."

"You nodded."

"I knew you wouldn't take them."

"You never asked to see the bottle."

He opened his mouth, and nothing came out.

I put my hand in my coat to get my keys.

My fingers closed on the tablet instead, small and hard, with a tiny letter pressed into one side.

I held it up to the light from the hall window.

No laxative I had ever bought had a letter pressed into it.

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