Chapter 2
Chapter 2
I turned to leave, and the passenger door opened.
Daisy jogged after me and grabbed my arm, so hard her nails dug into my skin.
"Lucia, he's been stuck in the middle for three years. It's killing him." She tilted her face up at me, her voice soft, her eyes anything but. "Can't you just have a little pity on him?"
I pulled my arm free. Not hard.
But she threw herself backward and slapped her own face, so loud people across the street turned to look.
Damian had just come around the front of the car. What he saw was Daisy stumbling back with a hand over her cheek, and my hand still in the air.
He crossed the distance in a few strides and pulled her behind him, looking down at the red mark already rising on her cheek. When he looked back up at me, his eyes were as cold as the East River in January.
"If you don't want to go to City Hall, take it out on me," he said, biting off every word. "What kind of person takes it out on her?"
I opened my mouth.
I wanted to tell him it wasn't me. But looking at the hand he held out in front of Daisy, guarding her, I suddenly didn't see the point. In three years, when had he ever believed me?
Damian helped Daisy into the car. He paused with his hand on the door and turned his head.
"If Antonio could see you right now," he said, "he'd think those three bullets were a waste."
The car door slammed.
The Cadillac turned the corner and was gone. I stood on the sidewalk for a long time, until the streetlights came on one by one, before I realized I'd forgotten to cry.
My phone buzzed.
Ms. Marino, the results of your follow-up head CT are in. We've found an abnormal shadow on the scan. Please come in to discuss them as soon as possible.
Grade three glioma.
The doctor clipped the scan to the lightbox and tapped the gray-white blur with the tip of his pen. "If you hadn't had a full workup after the head injury, we might not have caught this for another six months. There's still time to operate, but the location makes it very difficult. I'd recommend Dr. Schmidt in Zurich."
I stared at that shadow for a long time.
The seventh "accident" nearly killed me. And it was the reason I'd found this time bomb in my head early.
The irony was almost funny.
Surgery in Zurich, plus the treatment after, would cost at least six hundred thousand dollars.
My father's share of the docks had always been held in trust by the Vitales, the way the family did things, until the day I married in. Until then, every cent needed the heir's signature to move.
That heir was Damian.
The Vitale social club was in Bensonhurst. The front was an Italian restaurant. The back was where the real business happened.
When I pushed open the door to the back office, Daisy was bent over Damian's desk, arranging a bunch of white roses in a glass vase.
Damian had never liked flowers. Said the smell gave him a headache. In all these years, I'd never seen so much as a single petal on his desk.
When he saw me, the bit of warmth in his face disappeared. "What are you doing here?"
"I need to access the money my father left me." I stayed in the doorway. "I just need your signature."
Daisy straightened up and answered before he could.
"Lucia, you've been eating the Vitales' food and living under the Vitales' roof for years." She tilted her head and smiled sweetly. "And now, before you're even married, you're in a hurry to get the money in your own hands? Have you thought about what people will say about Damian?"
I didn't look at her. I looked at Damian.
He looked away.
"We'll talk about the money after you marry in." He opened the ledger on his desk, his voice flat. "Then whatever's yours, you'll get every cent. And whatever I owe your father, we'll call it even."
Under the desk, his fingers were laced with Daisy's.
On his left ring finger, he was still wearing my father's ring, the one with the Marino crest.
The fist I'd been clenching slowly opened.
"No need to wait," I said.
Damian frowned, like he didn't understand. A second later, his face darkened.
"This again?" He slammed the ledger shut. "Lucia, your father saved my life, and I'll remember that until the day I die. That doesn't mean you get to hold it over my head every time you want something."
He pressed the intercom on his desk. "Carlo, show Ms. Marino out."
Two of his men came in and took up position on either side of me.
I didn't let them touch me. I turned and walked out on my own.
That night, Daisy posted on Instagram.
In the photo, a white yacht was moored at a marina on Long Island. A new name had just been painted on the hull: Daisy.
The caption was one line: He says some people are worth breaking the rules for.
Hundreds of comments flooded in. People I knew and people I didn't, all saying how romantic Damian was, how this was what real love looked like.
I looked it up. The yacht had sold for eight million dollars.
Eight million. Enough for ten of my surgeries.
I set my phone face down on the nightstand, stared at the ceiling, and laughed. Tears ran out of the corners of my eyes and into my ears.
Fine.
From today on, neither of us owed the other anything.
