The Mafia Princess Engaged to Her Father's Enemy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

At the hospital Mariano accuses Emanuele and the guns come out. Raffi stands between them, and the only deal that stops the war tonight is her moving into the enemy's house. She chooses it.

The surgeon came out at ten past one in the morning with my father's blood still on his cuffs.

I stood up from the plastic chair, and the sage dress cracked where it had dried stiff.

"He's alive," the surgeon said.

Every man in the fifth-floor corridor breathed out at once.

"Two bullets. One broke the collarbone, one stopped a finger from the heart. We've put him under to let the swelling go down."

"Will he wake up?" I asked.

"I don't know, Miss Montalto. A coma is a door. We'll see which way it opens."

He said it kindly.

I thanked him, and then I turned around.

The corridor was a canal with two banks.

Montalto men lined the left wall, shoulder to shoulder, in black wool coats.

Cortese men held the right.

At the far end Emanuele sat on a bench with his elbows on his knees, a bloody handkerchief balled in one fist.

Nobody had spoken for three hours.

Everyone had counted the guns.

Mariano broke it.

He walked out into the middle of the corridor, took off his glasses, and wiped them on his tie, and his eyes were red.

"Eight years I've stood behind my uncle's chair," he said. "Eight years, and tonight they put two in him at his own daughter's engagement."

Heads turned.

"A man came to a truce with a gun and used it. I watched him."

He put the glasses back on and looked straight at Emanuele.

"Say you didn't fire."

Emanuele raised his head.

"I fired once," he said. "Up."

"Up," Mariano repeated, and a dozen Montalto men laughed in an ugly way.

The safeties came off.

Twenty muzzles lifted on the left, and twenty on the right answered.

I did not decide to move.

I was simply in the middle of the corridor, standing between them with my hands open.

My father's blood had dried to my elbows, and the dress had gone stiff as paper.

"Put them down."

Nobody did.

"I said put them down. This is a hospital, and my father is thirty feet from here."

"Raffi," Mariano said, very gently. "Come away from him, cara."

"No."

I turned and held my hands up so that every man could see them.

"Look at them. That's his blood and mine, and I'm the only person here who had both hands on him."

I pointed up.

"The glass fell from the gallery. Everyone saw that. Did anyone see where the shots came from?"

Silence.

"I did. I was under that table with my face on the floor."

"I saw the flash over his head. It came from above us."

My voice shook, and I let it.

"He fired up at the gallery, Mariano."

"If he'd wanted my father dead, he'd have shot across the table instead of dragging me out of the way."

Mariano's face went through three expressions faster than I could read them, and settled on pained.

"Sweetheart, you're in shock."

"I'm not in shock. I'm furious."

Behind me, a bench creaked.

Emanuele had stood.

He was bigger than I remembered, and he moved slowly, as one does around a dog that hasn't decided.

"The Montalto family will want someone to blame tonight," he said, to the corridor. "So will mine."

"Your father's car burned," said a Montalto man, "and ours wasn't the hand."

"Mine says it was yours."

"Enough," I said.

Emanuele looked at me.

"There's one thing that stops this tonight," he said, quieter, only for me. "A Montalto in a Cortese house. Not a prisoner. A guest."

"A hostage," I said.

"A guest who can't leave."

He didn't flinch from the word.

"Your family can't burn my house while you sleep in it."

"Mine can't burn yours while I hold your father's daughter under my roof."

"Nobody wants to be the man who shot Raffaella Montalto."

I understood it before he finished.

It was the only arithmetic in that corridor that came out even.

"And if I say no?"

"Then in about two minutes someone's finger slips," he said, "and the war you were engaged to stop starts in a hallway."

I looked at Mariano.

He was nodding already, slowly, with that wet-eyed sad look that I had trusted since I was six.

"It's the safest place," he said. "God forgive me, she's right to go."

"I'll sit with your father myself, Raffi. I won't leave his door."

I should have noticed how fast he said it.

I noticed only that my father lay down the hall with a machine breathing for him.

If I walked out of this corridor with Emanuele Cortese, nobody would shoot anybody tonight.

"My father's room stays Montalto," I said. "No Cortese man goes in."

"Agreed," said Emanuele.

"And I come back for him every day."

"Agreed."

I twisted the emerald around on my finger.

"I'm not doing this for you."

"You've said that," he said. "It was a good line the first time."

I walked down the corridor between the two lines of guns, and not one of them fired.

Outside, the night air smelled of rain and diesel.

A black car stood at the curb with its back door open.

I got in, and Emanuele slid in beside me, and the driver pulled out before the door had closed.

Something clicked under my hand.

I tried the handle, and it didn't give.

I tried the window, and it didn't move.

A woman in the front seat turned around.

She had cropped silver hair, a nose ring, and flour on the sleeve of her leather jacket.

"Hi," she said brightly. "I'm Bruna. Welcome. The doors lock from the outside, and nobody leaves."

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