The Don's Fatal Tenderness novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Before Midnight
Pamela learns his terms and signs; the clerk marries them while Dirk watches, and the chairman recognizes the name Ferraro.
I stopped walking.
The man in the black coat did not repeat himself, and he did not move closer.
"Excuse me?" I said.
"My name is Dominic Ferraro," he said.
"I need a wife before midnight, and you need somewhere to be that isn't this room."
Behind me, I heard Dirk's chair scrape.
Dominic's eyes flicked past my shoulder for half a second and came back to me.
"I'm thirty-six," he said.
"I'm not married, I'm not sick, and I have never hit a woman."
"That last part is a strange thing to lead with," I said.
"It's the part people ask about," he said.
One of the men behind him coughed into his fist, and I thought it might have been a laugh.
"Why midnight?" I asked.
"My father died last month," Dominic said.
"The men who run New York will only give his seat to a married man, and the deadline is tonight."
"I was supposed to marry a woman from another family this afternoon, and she left the state last night."
"That's very convenient for the woman who left," I said.
He looked at me, and his mouth moved, not quite a smile.
"What do I get?" I asked.
"My name, a house, and an account in your own name with a number you'll like."
"Protection, for as long as you want it."
"And if I want out?"
"Then you leave with the account, and nobody follows you."
I turned around and looked at Dirk.
He was standing with his arm around Delphine, and he was staring at the stranger in the black coat.
"Ferraro," the chairman said from the counter, very quietly.
Nobody else in the room seemed to know the name.
Dirk did, and Delphine did, and I watched the color run out of the chairman's heavy face.
I looked back at Dominic.
"Is it dangerous?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Nobody has ever told me that to my face before," I said.
"I won't lie to you about the things that matter."
I breathed in.
I thought about the apartment I shared with Dirk, and the dishes in his sink, and the key I would have to hand back.
"Where do I sign?" I said.
Dominic held out a pen.
It was a heavy pen, black and plain.
The clerk behind the second window had her mouth open.
"I'll need your license, ma'am," she said.
"I don't have one," I said.
Dominic's lawyer, a thin man in a gray suit, stepped forward and slid a folder across the counter.
"Everything is already filled in except her name," he said.
She asked me my full name, and I said it out loud for the whole room.
"Pamela Marie Lansing."
My father would have fainted.
The clerk checked her screen, and her shoulders dropped.
"You'll need a witness and an officiant," she said.
"We have the witnesses," Dominic said, and his two men stepped up.
"The officiant is down the hall," the clerk said.
"The county justice does ceremonies on Thursdays until three."
"It's Thursday," Dominic said.
It was ten after two.
We walked down the hall together, and he did not touch me, and I could hear every set of eyes behind us.
Dirk called my name once.
I did not turn around.
The justice was an older man with reading glasses on a chain, and he raised his eyebrows at Dominic's lawyer.
The room was small, with a flag and a window and a vase of plastic roses.
Dominic stood next to me, and he was taller than I had thought.
His coat smelled like cold air and cedar.
"Say the words and mean them as much as you want," he said, too low for anyone else to hear.
"I'll mean every one of them," I said.
The justice read the vows.
Dominic said his in a flat, even voice, and I said mine.
When it was time, he slid a ring onto my finger without looking at the box.
It fit, which was the first thing that made me afraid.
"You may kiss," the justice began.
Dominic bent down, and his mouth was warm and brief against mine.
It was not a kiss for the room.
It was the kind a man gives when he is deciding something.
When I opened my eyes, Dirk was standing in the doorway with Delphine behind him.
Dominic put his hand on my back.
"Mr. Alden," he said pleasantly.
"We seem to be keeping you from your own wedding."
The chairman had pushed up beside Dirk, and he said something sharp into Dirk's ear.
Dirk shook his head, and the chairman took his arm and pulled him out of the doorway.
Delphine stayed one second longer, staring at my hand.
"You have no idea what you just married," she said.
Dominic leaned down to my ear.
"She's right," he said quietly.
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