The Barren Wife He Buried Came Back With The Donna Crown Chapter 10
The Boy Next Door
The next time I saw Luca Fuselli, it was at a corner coffee shop on the North Side.
I’d just picked up my order. I turned, and he was already sitting at my table.
He’d lost weight. His face was cut up. His hands weren’t clean. But his eyes locked on mine and wouldn’t move.
I felt myself go tight all over. My voice came out cold.
“You should be halfway to South America. What are you doing on Falcone ground. Do you want to die?”
He looked at me. His eyes were red-rimmed. His voice was cracked and quiet.
He said he came to win me back.
He said the second I hit the water, his heart came apart in his chest. In that second, he finally understood he’d only ever loved one woman.
He said Cara got rid of the baby.
He kept trying to explain. Kept saying every man in the life ran like that. He got lost in it.
He said he didn’t love any of them. He said it was the rush. Just the rush.
He said Cara was pregnant because it was time. Because a Don needed an heir. He said he’d picked Cara because she looked like…
He couldn’t finish the sentence. He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “Do I have any chance at all? To fix this?”
I gave him a small, easy smile.
Then I slapped him across the face.
“Luca. From the night you were fucking Cara and cut the power off my Nonna, you and I have had nothing between us but blood.”
His face went bloodless. His whole body seemed to be coming apart. “Nonna. I killed Nonna. I didn’t. I didn’t think. I didn’t know the ventilator ran on the same line…”
I cut him off with a short laugh. “You should run, Luca. You stay much longer, you die here.”
His voice went hard. Stubborn. “I’m not leaving. Not until you forgive me. Your men can put me in the ground. I don’t care. I’m not leaving.”
He was practically begging. “Mia. Just let me watch you from far away. Just that.”
I found it funny. “I never sent anyone after you. The man hunting you is my husband. He loves me. He wants to bury you for me.”
Luca’s face went white in a second.
I lifted my hand. Let the diamond on my ring finger catch the light.
He looked like something scooped the last of him out with a spoon. He dropped back into the chair.
I raised my eyes over his shoulder.
A tall man was coming across the floor in a long dark coat. Face flat and cold.
I raised my hand at him. Smiled easy.
Then I turned back to Luca. Lifted an eyebrow.
“Now, Luca. Now you really want to run.”
Luca made a small, broken sound like a laugh. He got to his feet like a dog that had run too long.
Before he stepped away, he stopped. He said it low, so only I could hear him. “I couldn’t give you a good marriage. I hope this one gives you what I couldn’t.”
Enzo Marchetti reached me. Slid his arm around my waist. Pulled me in tight.
He looked me over from head to foot. Slowly. Like I was something fragile.
I laughed at him. I told him I was fine.
But still, he said, “He didn’t touch you, but he upset you. Same thing.”
He was set on taking me to the church across the block. Wanted a blessing. Wanted the bad luck rinsed off me.
I laughed until I almost cried at how young he was.
Enzo Marchetti. My arranged husband.
Five years younger than me. To the day.
The first time we met, I was quietly stunned.
I’d expected a polite arrangement. Two names on a certificate. Two houses run side by side.
The second the paperwork went through, he changed. The cold, quiet Underboss I met at the church door was gone.
He was on me the whole night. Wouldn’t sleep even when the sun came up. Held onto me like he’d finally caught something he’d been chasing his whole life.
He told me he’d been waiting for this day since he was a boy. Waiting for me to come home.
Then I finally understood who he was.
He was the boy next door. Growing up on the estate next to ours. The little kid five years younger than me, always trailing after me, never getting told to go home.
I’d loved him like a little brother, yet he’d been loving me a whole other way, quietly, for twenty years.
So we married first. And then, slowly, we fell in love.
Our life turned out steadier and softer than anything I ever thought I’d have.
…
Later, I heard.
The Commission drove Luca all the way out to the water. He ran until there was no shoreline left. In international waters, out of options, he went over the rail himself.
Falcone swallowed everything the Fuselli name used to own. Territory. Contracts. Books. All of it.
Every man who used to look through me, who used to pity Mrs. Fuselli, changed his name for me overnight.
Donna Falcone.
That was what they called me now.
I stood at the window of the Chicago estate. Watched the light on the lake.
I finally understood one thing.
Some kinds of love aren’t worth betting on.
And for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t have to bow my head for anyone again.
THE END