Don Bowed To Me Chapter 09
The ballroom fell quiet again.
Elliot’s face cycled through several shades of red and white.
Ethan had his head down, apparently trying to fold himself into the pattern of the Persian carpet.
A young man’s voice broke the silence.
“Nonno.”
He wore a well-cut deep navy three-piece suit.
His features carried the Marchetti line, but there was something steadier behind his eyes. Sharper.
Sebastian Marchetti. Matteo’s older cousin. Don Salvatore’s firstborn grandson.
The one the Family had chosen.
“Something you should hear, Nonno.”
Sebastian walked over to Don Salvatore, his voice respectful, measured.
“Before you arrived, in this room, the Vitales stood up as a Family and put Dr. Vitale out. Every one of them. Matteo…”
He glanced at Matteo.
“Matteo backed them. Publicly. In front of every Family on the coast.”
“Dr. Vitale is the most important business the Marchettis have in front of us right now. Matteo just handed her every reason to walk. If she takes her patents to the Colangelos, or the Genoveses, or the Delgado port operation, it’s on him. On this Family.”
Matteo’s face drained of color.
Don Salvatore was silent.
Only a few seconds.
But those few seconds put a sheen of cold sweat across Matteo’s forehead.
The old man’s fingers tapped once against the table.
“If this ballroom does not want Dr. Vitale in it, then very well.”
“Continue with the wedding. Dr. Vitale and I are leaving.”
He turned and gestured for me to walk with him.
Matteo lunged forward.
“Nonno!”
He caught Don Salvatore’s arm, his voice cracking.
“Nonno, please. It’s my wedding. You cannot walk out of my wedding.”
Don Salvatore looked at him.
Something close to how a man looks at a piece of furniture he has finally decided to throw out.
“Do you have any idea what I called in to get thirty minutes with Dr. Vitale?”
“You and your bride stood up together and put her out of this room.”
“And now you want me to stay?”
He didn’t look at Matteo again. He turned to me and inclined his head.
“Dr. Vitale. Shall we?”
I lifted my clutch, walked past every one of them, and headed for the door.
Behind me, Isabella’s composure finally cracked. Her voice broke over the microphone.
“Hazel!”
I didn’t look back.
A private lounge on the top floor of the Marchetti estate, above Ocean Drive.
Don Salvatore poured a glass of Château Lafite ’82 himself and set it in front of me.
“Dr. Vitale. What happened in that ballroom was a failure of respect. My grandson’s failure. The Marchetti name’s failure. I apologize on behalf of my Family.”
He set the bottle down. His voice was steady, unhurried.
“The defense subcontract will not run through Matteo. He does not have the judgment for what comes next. He does not have the judgment for you.”
“I am putting Sebastian on it directly. A clean team under him, reporting to me. Your terms. All of them.”
I lifted the glass and took a sip.
The Bureau’s voice-recognition stack got better every year. The Marchettis had lost three capos to wiretaps in the last two.
I was the only person on this continent who could hand them a way out.
An hour later, we had the frame of the deal.
Technology contribution in exchange for twenty percent equity in the defense subsidiary. A seven-figure upfront licensing fee. Sebastian as the sole point of contact.
Don Salvatore walked me down to the car himself and held the door open for me.
Every man in the courtyard saw it.
The Four Seasons had put me in the Presidential Suite on the forty-second floor.
The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the whole length of Narragansett Bay.
I showered, poured a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and sat down on the couch by the window in a hotel robe.
My phone had been buzzing without pause.
The family group chat had crossed two hundred messages.
My mother had sent seven voice memos, back to back, none of them under a minute.
Her tone had nothing in common with the woman who’d screamed at me across the dining table the night before.
【Hazel, where are you? A young woman shouldn’t be out alone in Newport at night. Come home. I had the housekeeper put fresh sheets on your bed.】
【Mom said things she didn’t mean. What mother doesn’t love her own daughter? You know what my temper is like.】
【Remember when you were four, and you had pneumonia? Mom slept in that hospital chair for three nights. That has to count for something.】
【Hazel, we are Family. We are blood. Blood is blood.】