My Mafia Husband Gave Her Couture—And Me Her Scraps Chapter 07
The Red Hook reception had barely begun when the big screen behind the podium cut to black.
The reception was Blackwood’s affair.
After the East River docks stripped Moretti of transit rights, Blackwood had to stand before the old East Coast houses and put the new transport partners on display.
The iron doors of the warehouse hung half open. Sea air poured in, thick with salt and diesel.
The dockworkers’ union men stood inside the white line. Sullivan’s people held the doors.
The old-house delegates sat in the front rows, trading glances.
The screen behind the podium was meant to display the new port map—the Blackwood-Sullivan lines.
This wasn’t some society dinner.
This was Blackwood telling the East Coast, to every last one of them:
Moretti’s line was cut.
I had just lifted my glass, ready to announce the three safe transport lines back in service, when Sienna’s face flashed onto the screen.
She was propped up in a hospital bed, her wrist wrapped in gauze, her voice so thin it seemed on the verge of breaking.
“I don’t blame Elena. She just wants to win too badly.”
“But I don’t have the strength anymore. I can’t take being cornered by her another day.”
The room erupted at once.
“Miss Blackwood, is Sienna’s suicide attempt because you drove her to this?”
“Are you trying to push her over the edge?”
“You and Don Moretti—are you actually divorced or not?”
At the warehouse’s side door, Dante stood.
He’d come uninvited.
The guards didn’t dare truly bar a Don—they only held him behind the white line at the side entrance.
He clearly hadn’t expected this either. His face was thunderous.
But his first instinct was still to pull out his phone and call Sienna.
I watched him.
He answered and said, low:
“Stop this. Turn it off.”
Stop this.
Not: why are you lying.
Not: why are you sabotaging my wife’s event.
Just: stop this.
Sienna sobbed into the phone.
“Dante, I really can’t hold on anymore. I just wanted them to know I’m not that awful.”
He shut his eyes and softened his voice.
“I’m coming.”
One line—a replay of a thousand nights before.
The moment she cried, he went.
I set down my glass and picked up the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Since Sienna wants to revisit the past at a Blackwood reception, let’s revisit it together.”
The screen switched.
Onto it came the preparation footage from the day of the wedding—the lakeside ceremony being set up.
Sienna stood at the water’s edge, going over the sequence with Moretti’s old master of rites.
“The key has to go somewhere she can’t reach.”
“The guards in the water—keep them well back.”
The old master of rites hesitated.
“And if something actually happens to Miss Elena?”
Sienna laughed.
“It won’t. She wants to be Dante’s Donna so badly she’d bring that key up if it killed her.”
She paused, then added:
“Elena has too much pride. She won’t make a scene in public. The more composed she is, the easier she is to push around.”
“Once she goes in, Dante will believe all over again that she still can’t live without him.”
The whole room went off like a fuse.
The color drained from Dante’s face.
His head snapped toward me.
“You knew all along?”
I didn’t look at him.
The footage kept rolling.
The camera jolted. Another voice came through—low, impatient.
“Just don’t get anyone killed.”
That was Dante.
The room detonated.
The old houses in the front rows put their heads together, murmurs rising past any hope of being kept down.
Dante stood frozen.
He had finally remembered.
That night, he hadn’t been entirely in the dark.
He’d simply figured that I loved him too much to die.
If I wasn’t going to die, it wasn’t worth his attention.
Sienna’s call was still connected.
She was shrieking on the other end.
“Turn it off! Elena, turn it off!”
I spoke into the microphone.
“Sienna. I’m not cornering you.”
“I’m only bolting the same machine you two once mounted over my head—right back over yours.”
Dante took a step forward. His voice shook.
“Elena, at the time I—”
I cut him off.
“Don Moretti. The reception isn’t over. Kindly stop disturbing Blackwood’s guests.”
The guards blocked him.
For the first time.
He stood outside the crowd—couldn’t come in, couldn’t take me away.
Declan sat in the first row. He raised his hands and began to clap.
The applause spread from scattered claps until it filled the entire warehouse.
I stood beneath the lights, looking at the frozen lake on the screen.
Once, that water had nearly swallowed me.
This time, at last, it rose to drown the ground beneath their own feet.