The Barren Wife He Buried Came Back With The Donna Crown Chapter 03
The Watch
I closed my eyes. I made a small sound of agreement.
Luca’s face broke into that old smile. He caught my hand.
“Mia. I told you, I owed you a child. Now I’ve fixed it. He’ll call you Mama too. The godmother stuff. Won’t that make you happy?”
I pulled my hand out of his.
The auction started.
Lot after lot went up. I raised my paddle a few times, small pieces, nothing serious.
Howvever, every time I did, Cara raised hers to top me. Just to top me.
After a while, I stopped bidding. I sat there and watched Luca burn money on her like she was made of gold.
Then they wheeled out the final lot.
The blood left my face.
Sitting on the velvet display was an antique silver pocket watch.
Tarnished. Chain broken. The kind of piece any collectors would walk past.
Opening bid, three hundred dollars.
I knew that watch the second I saw it.
Silver case. Snap the front open and the inside of the lid was engraved with a falcon. Wings up. Talons out. The Falcone family crest.
My mother’s watch.
The one I’d sold at a pawn shop in Chicago fifteen years ago for the price of two bus tickets and a boat ride out of that life.
I’d been hunting it for years. Every pawn shop, every auction, every dealer. Gone. Sold. Untraceable.
Until now.
I shot to my feet. I raised my paddle so hard the plastic cracked in my grip.”Thirty thousand.”
A soft, girlish voice from beside me.
“Three million.”
Cara. Smiling.
I turned on her. She flinched into Luca’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m really, really sorry. Luca said I could have anything I wanted tonight. To celebrate the baby.” She smiled at the watch. “I only wanted a little teether for the baby. But if you want that ugly thing, take it. I’ll drop out.”
I didn’t look at her. I raised my paddle again. “Thirty thousand…”
“Three million.”
Luca cut me off. “I promised Cara she gets what she wants tonight, Mia. It’s a piece of scrap silver. Let her have it. Tomorrow’s auction has real jewelry. Emerald, ruby, whatever you want. I’ll buy the whole case.”
“Luca.” My voice was shaking. I couldn’t stop it. “That watch belonged to my mother.”
The room went quiet.
“Do whatever you want. Take whatever you want. I don’t care about any of it. But not this one, Luca. Not this.”
I did something I hadn’t done in ten years.
I begged.
“Please. For everything. For what we used to be. That watch is what I sold to get us out of Chicago. That watch is the reason we’re alive. Please.”
Luca stared at me.
He didn’t say a word.
He set his paddle down on the table.
I stood up. Every eye in the room was on me. I gripped the paddle with both hands.
“Three million and one.”
That was every dollar I had. Every dollar Luca hadn’t already frozen or clawed back.
If he bid again, I was done.
Luca didn’t bid again.
The gavel came down.
The watch came to me on a velvet tray. I couldn’t feel my hands. I held out my card.
The auction clerk didn’t take it.
“Mrs. Fuselli. There are no funds on this card.”
I stared at him. “That’s impossible. There should be over three million on that.”
Cara drifted up beside me. Trays of new jewelry in her hands. She smiled at me, wide and sweet. “Mrs. Fuselli, I already used your card. For all of my things tonight. Consider us even. I forgive you for scaring me earlier.”
Something in me snapped. “Give it back. Give me my money back!”
I grabbed her wrist. I turned to the clerk. “None of what she bought tonight is mine. Charge Luca. Give me my money!”
Cara jerked her hand up to push me off. The tray in her palm caught me across the cheekbone. The corner of a diamond opened up the skin under my eye.
Blood. Warm and instant.
I dropped her wrist and clutched my face.
Through the red haze I saw her feet skid on the marble. She went down. Sat down hard. Both hands flew to her stomach.
She screamed.
Luca was already shoving through the crowd before her scream hit the ceiling. “Cara. Cara, honey, look at me.”
She grabbed his lapel and pointed at me. “Boss, she wanted the jewelry. She said it was hers. I said no. She pushed me. Boss, she pushed me, I felt the baby, please, please.”
I tried to stand. I tried to speak. “I didn’t push her. She slipped.”
Even Luca’s own soldier, standing right behind us, opened his mouth to say it.
“Boss, actually, she wasn’t the one…”
“It hurts, Boss. It hurts so bad. We’re gonna lose the baby.”
Luca stopped hearing anything else.
He scooped her up. He turned to his men. He didn’t look at me once. “Whoever laid a hand on my woman tonight.”
His voice was low. Dead calm. The kind of calm his men had learned to fear. “Break the arm that pushed her. Both of them. If we lose the baby, the whole family goes in the ground with her.”