The Don Bows Only To His Curvy Crush Chapter 03
The Fat Girl and the Young Master
“What the hell is this? Is he trying to put you on the casting couch?”
Marnie flips the card back and forth in the car. “This isn’t a hotel keycard, is it?”
A hotel keycard.
The memory hits like a fist to the ribs.
Six years later, and this man still hasn’t changed his taste.
“No, this doesn’t add up. He turned down an Oscar winner. Why the hell is he handing you a keycard?”
She squints at me. “Be honest with me. Did you two have something going on before?”
I force a laugh.
“Are you serious? You’ve seen my before-photos. I was a walking meatball. Someone like him wouldn’t have looked at me twice.”
A very persuasive answer.
Marnie nods, half-convinced. “True. Back then you would’ve disappeared in a crowd.”
“Still — who could’ve guessed? Get the weight off and that face was practically built for the big screen.”
I laugh along. Weak.
Marnie’s wrong, though.
Back then, I didn’t disappear. Inside those Manor walls, I was the girl everyone talked about.
My name got dragged next to Dante’s for two full years.
To the point where he hated the sound of it.
—
Six years ago. My father took a bullet in a Family war he was too small to matter in.
He left behind a debt to the Moretti. Old Don Moretti wasn’t a monster.
He wiped half of it.
The other half — I worked off in his estate.
Nineteen years old, on grief meds, one hundred and sixty-five pounds.
They handed me to the young master’s rotation of personal assistants.
Fetch coffee. Answer his phones. Carry his dry cleaning. Keep my mouth shut.
That was the year Dante flew back from Sicily. Twenty-two. Sharp jaw, dark eyes, a mouth that never smiled.
The old Don’s only son, the next name on the Family tree.
Every made man in that house watched him like they were watching a loaded gun.
Every girl on the payroll watched him too. Including me.
I had a mirror. I knew where I stood.
So while Annabella Conti — the Family’s other pretty little assistant, twenty and already being groomed as a match for him — leaned across his desk to laugh at his jokes, I stayed in the corner and sorted his mail.
While she rode shotgun in his Maserati, I sat in the back of the crew car, watching the back of his head through two panes of glass.
Then I poured every last one of those feelings into a journal.
It could’ve stayed that way. Quiet. Private. Sacred.
Until one afternoon, I came back from a supply run and one of Dante’s guards had my journal open on the kitchen counter of the estate staff wing, reading it aloud to the crew.
“Dante, I don’t know why I like you this much. We’ve never even spoken. All I do is watch the back of your neck when you walk past me in the hallway—”
“Holy shit, Bella! You? Crushing on Dante?” He howled with laughter.
My most private, shaking-hand words — read out loud, mocked, laughed at.
My face went hot. My eyes stung.
The guy grinned and slid my journal down the counter, straight to where Dante was standing in the doorway, coffee in hand.
“Dante — question. How’s it feel to have Piggy Bella pining for you?”
Every head in the room turned.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood, and looked at him.
Dante didn’t speak. He just set the coffee down, picked up my journal and walked over.
“Thanks.”
“But… could you maybe stop writing these?”
Something inside me — the last thin wire holding me together — snapped clean in half.
I heard my own pride shatter.
I took the journal back with trembling fingers. “Okay. I understand.”
The tears came before I could stop them. Slow, ugly, cold.
I wiped my face and shoved the journal into the drawer under the counter.
Then, quietly, from beside me, Dante spoke again. “Also. You just spoke to me.”
“What?”
I sniffed, looked up. Stunned.
His face was half in shadow, back-lit by the kitchen window.
His eyes — black, endless — held tiny fractured pieces of light.
“In your journal. You said we’d never spoken.”
The corner of his mouth lifted.
“Now, you have.”