Don Bowed To Me Chapter 23
My mother’s voice trembles. Her eyes are red at exactly the right shade. That practiced kind of red.
“Hazel.”
“Mom has been waiting for your call every day these past six months.”
Isabella immediately looks up at me.
Tears already pooling in her eyes.
“Hazel,” she says softly, calling my name. “Can you just look at me?”
They’re putting on a show in front of all these people, hoping to force me to bow my head, to use my connections, to draw on my resources.
But I won’t.
I set the champagne flute down. Say nothing.
Across the head table, a man slowly stands.
He’s holding a glass of whiskey, wearing an expensive but poorly-cut three-piece suit. He crosses the hall toward us.
Dante Falconieri.
Captain of the high school football team.
Ten years ago, he was the only boy I’d ever had feelings for.
He walks up to the head table, sits down beside Camilla. His hand rests naturally on the back of her chair.
That gesture makes me pause for half a second.
Ten years. Dante is still chasing Camilla.
Camilla doesn’t even glance at him. She just lifts her champagne flute and lets his hand stay there.
Dante looks at me. His eyes carry the same condescension they did ten years ago.
“Hazel, I remember you were always at odds with your mom since we were kids.”
“You’re twenty-eight now, and you’re still like this?”
He turns to the whole table, throws up his hands. His tone like he’s telling an old joke everyone knows.
“Remember, guys? Back in high school, Hazel’s mom used to come to school every day to talk to the teachers, worrying about her grades.”
“And what did she do? Didn’t even go to prom. Just buried in books all the time doing god knows what.”
That year, after Camilla and her crowd humiliated me in the cafeteria, I hid at the deepest table in the library.
Head down, face pressed into my sleeve.
Someone sat down across from me. It was Dante Falconieri.
He handed me a tissue.
“Hazel, don’t cry,” he said. “Camilla’s just like that. Don’t take it to heart.”
I took the tissue.
Dante looked at me and gave a soft laugh.
“Honestly, I think you’re kind of special.”
“You’re not like the rest of us, partying every weekend.”
“You have your own world.”
I looked up at him. Tears still on my face.
He smiled at me, then got up and walked away.
I held onto that sentence for two whole years.
For two years, Dante never said another word to me.
But every time he passed me in the hall, he’d give me a small smile.
Senior year. Two weeks before graduation.
I worked up the courage to wait for him by his locker.
I told him I liked him.
Dante froze for two seconds.
Then he burst out laughing.
He turned and shouted at his teammates down the hall. “Hey! Camilla was right! Hazel Vitale actually has a crush on me!”
The entire hallway exploded into laughter.
Dante turned back to me, that familiar smile still on his face.
“Hazel, I was just messing with you.”
“You didn’t actually take it seriously, did you?”
He looked me up and down.
“Take a good look at yourself in the mirror, honey.”
I found out later.
That tissue in the library. Camilla had Dante deliver it.
Just to watch me fall for a man who would never like me.
Just so that in the last week before graduation, in front of the entire Newport Prep, I would be publicly humiliated.
Back to now. Dante is still talking.
“Hazel, you should really be more honest with yourself.”
He takes a sip of whiskey.
“My dad has been running Marchetti’s union line in Providence for twenty years.”
“I’m getting made next month.”
He sets the glass down and looks at me.
“As a future Made Man, let me give you some advice.”
“If you want to stay in the family, don’t be as naive and clueless as you used to be.”
“Marchetti probably hired you as a technical consultant out of respect for your sister, who almost married in.”
Camilla covers her mouth and laughs.
“Dante, your mouth is vicious.”
Dante leans in smugly. Loud enough for the entire head table to hear.
“I’m just telling it like it is. Everyone sitting at Marchetti’s table is the real deal.”
“Hazel, sooner or later they’re going to figure out you’re not one of them.”
He tilts his head, looking at me with the exact same smile from ten years ago.
“Do yourself a favor. Go home and beg your mother’s forgiveness.”
“Get Isabella a position with the Marchetti family. That way no one has to find out you’re trash.”