Don Forced Me To Accept His Mistress on the Eve of Our Wedding

After the wedding rehearsal, Dante told me he intended to keep his mistress.

I was still in the fitted gown.

Four hundred walnut chairs stood in the ballroom of the Long Island estate, and every important member of the Russo Family in New York had confirmed they would attend.

The priest had just left, and the staff were adjusting the seating for the next day.

Dante stood in front of the altar, unhurriedly straightening his cufflinks.

"Vivian won't affect your position."

I thought I had misheard him.

"Who?"

"Vivian Hale," he said. "You met her at the charity dinner."

Of course I had.

She was young and beautiful, and she had a habit of tilting her head down when she spoke, a practiced kind of meekness.

Last month she had walked into my charity dinner on Dante's arm and explained that she had twisted her ankle and needed someone to lean on.

Dante told me then that she was only the daughter of an important political consultant.

"How long have you been sleeping with her?"

"Six months."

He did not hesitate.

I stared at him, and all at once the wedding dress felt so heavy I could not breathe.

After tomorrow I would be Dante's wife. The Russo Family was prepared to formally recognize me as Donna at the wedding.

I had spent ten years helping Dante take control of the underground casinos, the construction unions and the Brooklyn docks.

Now, on the eve of the wedding, he was telling me he had installed another woman at his side.

"Do you want to call off the wedding?" I asked.

"Just the opposite."

Dante stepped down from the altar and stopped in front of me.

"The wedding goes ahead. You are still my wife, and the only Donna of the Russo Family. Vivian gets none of that."

"Then what does she get?"

"Part of my time."

He said it as calmly as if he were assigning some unimportant piece of property.

"Lysa, this is a common arrangement in families like ours. You should learn to accept it."

I looked at his face.

Ten years ago, the first time I saw Dante, he was lying at the back door of an underground clinic in Brooklyn with two bullets in his stomach.

Marco Russo's men were hunting him across the whole city. No doctor would touch an illegitimate son the Don's family refused to acknowledge.

I registered him under my mother's surname and traded the diamond earrings my grandmother had left me for one surgery.

When Dante woke up, he took my hand and asked, "Why did you save me?"

I told him it was because I did not like watching other people decide whether a man deserved to live.

He did not even own a working gun then.

Now he ran the underground business of three boroughs, and he was trying to decide for me what kind of marriage I should accept.

"And if I don't accept it?"

Dante frowned slightly, as if my reaction disappointed him.

"I will give you the Manhattan apartment, two properties on Long Island, and enough money to live on for the rest of your life."

"And then?"

"And then we cancel the wedding."

"You think I can't survive without your money?"

"I think you need to be realistic."

He reached out and touched my face.

"You have been away from Italy for ten years. Your Family never came looking for you. Apart from me, there is no one in New York you can really lean on."

I knocked his hand away.

Dante's expression darkened.

"I haven't abandoned you. I'm giving you a choice."

The ballroom doors swung open.

Vivian walked in wearing a long silver dress, an emerald brooch pinned at her breast.

It was the one my mother had left me.

Five years ago Dante promised me I would not wear it again until our wedding day.

Vivian touched the brooch and gave me an apologetic smile.

"I hope you don't mind. Dante said the color suits me better."

I turned to look at Dante.

He did not tell her to take it off.

In that moment I understood that this was a betrayal he had been building for a long time.

He was testing how much of him I could stand.