He Claimed My Sister So I Married A Mafia Don Chapter 06
Say It in Front of Them
Dante looks toward Matteo’s front door.
“So this is home now?”
“I still have my apartment.”
“But you’ll move in.”
“When we’ve decided what works for us.”
He gives a short laugh.
“You got engaged without deciding that?”
“We’ve talked about it. I’m allowed to take my time.”
“You never needed this much time with me.”
“I should have taken more.”
The words hurt him.
I can see it.
I also know they’re true.
He puts his hands in his pockets.
For a moment, he looks almost like the man who used to wait outside my office with dinner because he knew I’d forgotten to eat.
Then he says, “Bianca has had enough people leave her.”
I close my eyes.
“Don’t.”
“I’m explaining.”
“You’ve been explaining her feelings to me for five years.”
“Her father—”
“Died protecting mine. I know.”
He stops.
“I loved him, too,” I say. “I remember him teaching me to ride a bike. You don’t have to remind me why we took her in.”
“I never meant for you to feel less important.”
“What did you expect me to feel?”
He has no answer.
“You took her to a dinner you told me was canceled.”
“She was upset.”
“So you lied to me.”
“Yes.”
“And when people congratulated you?”
He looks toward the gate.
“I let it happen.”
I wait.
His eyes return to mine.
“I’m sorry.”
For once, there’s nothing attached to it.
No explanation of what I did first.
No request that I think about someone else.
I believe him.
It doesn’t make me want to get in his car.
“I heard you,” I say.
“Give me a chance to show you.”
“No.”
“I can keep my distance from her.”
“That’s your decision.”
“I’m making it for you.”
“That’s why I don’t trust it.”
His face tightens.
“If I hadn’t left, would you be asking for her key?”
He looks down.
A bird lands on the low wall beside the drive.
For several seconds, it’s the only thing that moves.
Then his phone rings.
He silences it.
“They’re waiting for you,” I say.
“They can wait.”
“I’m finished talking.”
He takes his hands out of his pockets.
“Five years, Adriana.”
“I was there.”
“Doesn’t that mean anything?”
“It’s why I stayed as long as I did.”
He reaches toward me, then stops before touching my arm.
“I love you.”
I swallow.
There was a time when I would have accepted that as an answer to everything.
“I wanted a different life with you,” I say. “I told you what was wrong. You kept asking me to live with it.”
“We can have that life now.”
“I don’t want it with you anymore.”
He goes still.
I let him hear it.
Then I turn toward the house.
Behind me, he says my name.
I keep walking.
Matteo opens the door.
He looks at my face, then steps aside.
“Come in.”
I do.
By the time Dante reaches the hotel, the celebration is forty minutes late.
His father waits outside the ballroom.
“Is she coming?”
“No.”
His father studies him.
Then he nods toward the doors.
“Everyone else did.”
Music plays inside.
Dante can hear glasses, conversation, a burst of laughter.
Bianca comes out with his mother.
She looks behind him.
When she sees no one, her shoulders ease.
“You came back.”
“I came to cancel.”
His mother closes her eyes.
Bianca stares at him.
“After you went to her?”
“Yes.”
“And if she’d said yes, you would have brought her here in my place?”
He looks at the dress.
“Yes.”
Bianca steps back.
He has spent years finding softer ways to tell her things.
There isn’t one for this.
“You let me walk in here,” she says.
“I did.”
“You let them congratulate me.”
“I know.”
A photographer at the end of the corridor raises his camera.
Dante’s father lifts a hand, and the man lowers it.
Bianca sees the movement.
“Now you care who’s watching?”
Dante remembers Adriana asking whether he had read the comments.
How quickly he had dismissed her.
His father opens the ballroom door.
Conversation near the entrance stops.
Dante walks inside.
At the front of the room, two chairs stand beneath an arrangement of white flowers.
Bianca’s name is printed beside his.
He had allowed all of it.
The musicians stop as he approaches the microphone.
His mother remains near the door.
Bianca doesn’t come in.
Dante looks across the waiting tables.
“There will be no engagement tonight.”