All Chapters of REBORN TO MARRY MY MAFIA ENEMY: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

The phone rang at twenty minutes to six, while Damon was in the elevator with his coat over his arm and a promise in his pocket.The promise was Grace's. It was the school art show, which began at half past six in a gymnasium that smelled of floor polish and construction paper, and which his daughter had been talking about for two weeks with the grave excitement of a young woman about to be reviewed. Sera had already taken Theodore ahead. Damon was to follow directly. He had cleared his evening three days ago, in writing, and he had been looking forward to it with an eagerness that would have embarrassed him a year ago.The screen said HARBOR OPERATIONS. His stomach dropped before he answered."Mr. Voss, it is Tomas at the port." The voice was tight and quick. "I am sorry to call you now. The crane operators have given notice. The union representative says that unless the revised shift pay is agreed by eight tonight, they walk off at the start of the evening rotation. We have the refr

The first meeting of the Wedding Committee took place in Beatrice's dining room on the Sunday after the proposal, and it was chaired, by unanimous and entirely unrecorded vote, by an eight year old.Grace sat at the head of the long mahogany table with a clipboard, a sharpened pencil, and a wooden spoon, which she used in place of a gavel and brought down with a firmness that made the teacups jump. Theodore sat at her right hand in his paper captain's hat, having been appointed Minister of Bowties. Around the rest of the table, in a state of affectionate and wholly unsuccessful dignity, sat the adults: Thomas and Sera's mother, Adeline and Nathaniel with sleepy Eleanor between them, Harrington at the far end with a cup of tea and the expression of a man observing a very civilized coup, and, in the place of honor, Beatrice, who had informed everyone that she was merely a guest and had been issuing instructions since the soup.Sera and Damon sat side by side, hands joined under the table

The atelier was a narrow shop on a quiet street, squeezed between a bookbinder and a clockmaker, with a faded green awning and a brass bell that rang a little crookedly when the door opened. Inside, it smelled of steam and chalk and warm cloth. Bolts of fabric leaned against every wall in an avalanche of cream and ivory and blush and silver, and a long mirror in a worn wooden frame stood in the center of the room like an old, patient judge."Mrs. Okafor has been sewing for this family for thirty years," Beatrice announced, sweeping in behind Sera in her good gray coat. "She made Elena's honeymoon dress, and Elena said it was the only dress she ever loved. She has opinions. Do not argue with them.""I do not have opinions," said a small, brisk woman with a tape measure around her neck, looking Sera up and down. "I have information. Come in, come in. You are thinner than the last time. We will fix that with seams."It was a cold afternoon at the end of February. Outside, the first thin

It happened on a bright Tuesday morning, eleven days before the wedding, and it happened so quickly that Sera did not understand it until it was over.She had gone to the garden alone. That was the first thing she would remember, afterward, and the thing she would turn over most carefully. She had wanted a quiet hour before the final week began, with nobody to ask her opinion about napkins. The day was clear and unexpectedly warm. The maples at the edge of Beatrice's lawn had put out a haze of small red buds. The burlap had come off the rose bush at last, and in its place, along the dark stems, stood a hundred tight green promises. Nathaniel's crew had raised the frame of the pavilion the previous afternoon, pale wood and clean lines against the sky, and Sera walked slowly beneath it with her hand trailing along a beam, imagining the ribbon, the chairs, the light.She was smiling. She remembered that, too.Behind the garden wall, on the narrow service lane, a delivery truck had pulled

The rehearsal was a disaster, and everyone agreed afterward that it had been perfect.It began at five o'clock on Friday, in a garden that glowed. The sun had come out to see what all the fuss was about, and lay low and golden across the new grass. The pavilion stood finished at last, a slender, airy frame of pale wood and glass with a peaked roof like folded hands, and from its beams someone, Sera suspected Nathaniel, had hung dozens of tiny paper lanterns, each hand painted in gold. The forty chairs from the greenhouse stood in neat rows. At the end of the garden path, beside the stone bench, the rose bush had burst.Sera stopped at the gate and simply looked.It had opened overnight. There was no other explanation. On Thursday it had been a bush of tight green promises, and now, in the evening light, it was thick with blooms, a hundred small blushing roses, soft pink fading to cream at their hearts, tumbling over the old stone as if the whole garden had been holding its breath for