Home / My Ex Called Me a Stand-In So I Married the Don / Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

All Chapters of My Ex Called Me a Stand-In So I Married the Don: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

30 Chapters

Chapter 21 Whenever You Turned Around

He didn't stop.He rolled her under him and kissed her hard and deep, and this time there was nothing slow about it. His shirt hit the floor. Her robe was already gone. His skin was hot against hers everywhere they touched.When he realized it was her first time, he went still above her."Elena." He searched her face. "You've never...""No.""Not with him?""Not with anyone."He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, his whole face had gone soft. He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers, carefully, almost afraid to."Then we go slow," he said. "And you tell me. Anything. You tell me."He was so careful with her. More careful than she'd known a man could be. He kissed her through the moment it hurt, murmuring against her temple, holding perfectly still until her breathing evened out and she pulled him closer herself.After that, it didn't hurt.After that, it was something she didn't have words for.They fit. That was the only way she could think of it later. Every

Chapter 22 The Maid's Daughter

Elena looked at the text for two seconds.She didn't need to guess who it was from. She deleted it and put the phone back in her bag."Problem?" Dante asked."No."He glanced at her, then back at the road, and didn't push.The Rossi estate sat at the end of a long private drive in Bedford, behind stone walls and a gate with two armed men on it. When Elena was a girl, the house had seemed enormous. It still did.Tonight, the whole place was lit up. Caterers' vans were lined up by the service entrance. Valets in white jackets waited on the gravel. By seven, every important name in New York would be walking through the front door. Her father had invited all of them. Judges, developers, men from the other families, two congressmen. He meant to introduce his daughter to every one of them.She and Dante had come early, before any of the guests.Dante walked her straight upstairs toward her father's study.At the landing, she stopped at the railing and looked down into the front hall, the way

Chapter 23 Search My Bag

Teresa straightened up. Her face went red, then white.Bianca looked her up and down, from her sensible shoes to her gray bun."No wonder you never talked about your family," she said to Elena. "I'd be embarrassed too. Cleaning other people's toilets for a living."Teresa's hands began to shake.Elena stood up and took one of those hands in both of hers. She held it until it stopped.Then she looked at Bianca."There's nothing embarrassing about working for a living," she said. "Teresa has worked with her own two hands for 30 years. She's never taken anything she didn't earn." She smiled a little. "You know what is embarrassing? A grown woman who's never done anything in her life except spend a man's money."Bianca's mouth fell open. "Excuse me?""You heard me.""You're the maid's daughter." Bianca's voice was climbing. "You're a broke nobody from nowhere. This party is for Vincent Rossi's family. These are real people. You don't belong anywhere near this place. You should be downstair

Chapter 24 Who Touched My Daughter's Bag?

Elena slipped the Chanel bag off her shoulder and held it out."Go ahead," she said. "Search it."Bianca blinked. For half a second, she hesitated.Then she snatched the bag, yanked the zipper open, and turned it upside down over the floor.Lipstick. Keys. A wallet. Elena's new phone. A pen from Biscayne Memorial.And a bracelet. Five little blue clovers on a gold chain, glinting on the parquet.The crowd made a sound all at once.Bianca bent and scooped it up. She held it high so the whole room could see."And you said you didn't take it." Her voice rang. "What's this, then?" She looked at the bag in her other hand. "And I bet this Chanel's stolen too, isn't it? Where would a maid's daughter get a Chanel?"The zipper on Elena's bag had a gap at each end. Bianca had seen it on the stairs. All it had taken was a quick hand in the doorway of the powder room.She'd been almost sure Elena hadn't noticed. Now she was certain.She opened her mouth to say more.The crowd shifted. People stepp

Chapter 25 I'm the One Ending It

Vincent Rossi turned to face the room."For those of you who haven't met her," he said, and his voice carried to every corner, "this is my daughter. Elena Rossi. My eldest. She's just come home after three years away, and this party is for her." He paused. "Anyone in this room who has a problem with that can leave now."Nobody moved.Vincent nodded to the two men by the door.They crossed the room, took Bianca by the arms, and walked her toward the front hall. She twisted and looked back over her shoulder, her mouth open, but they didn't slow down. The front doors opened and closed.The crowd began, very carefully, to breathe again.Julian stood in the middle of the floor. His eyes had gone red."Elena." His voice cracked. "Why? Three years! Why didn't you ever tell me who you were?"Elena looked at him from the arm of the sofa."Last Christmas," she said, "I asked you to come to New York with me. I wanted you to meet my father. I was going to tell you everything that week." Her voice

Chapter 26 Dessert First

Two of Vincent's men picked Julian up off the floor and walked him out the same way they'd walked Bianca.Bianca was waiting on the gravel by the valet stand, shivering in her cream dress. She grabbed his arm the moment the doors shut behind him."Julian, what do we do? What do we do?" Her words were tumbling over each other. "That was Vincent Rossi. That was Dante Valenti. Do you understand who we just... the marina deal is dead. It's dead! Your mother's going to kill me. What if they come after us? What if they come after your family?"Julian didn't answer her.He stood on the gravel with his hands at his sides and stared at the lit-up house."Julian! Are you even listening to me?"He wasn't.By midnight, the story was everywhere.Vincent had stood up at dinner and told the room that his daughter was taking over her late mother's company, Conti Biomedical. By breakfast, half of New York knew the name Elena Rossi. By lunch, the gossip accounts had found everything else.The Rossi heir

Chapter 27 Be Good for Me

"Oh my God," Elena said. "Dante. What is all this?"Every wall was covered in her.Photographs, dozens of them, in plain black frames. Elena at her white coat ceremony, the first week of medical school, squinting into the sun. Elena in a cap and gown on the steps at Columbia. Elena in navy scrubs outside the main entrance at Biscayne Memorial, holding a coffee, not looking at the camera. Elena laughing at something on the hospital roof deck. She didn't remember anybody taking that one."When was this taken?" she asked without turning around."Your second year in Miami," Dante said from the doorway. "Fourth of July. You were watching the fireworks off the roof with the night nurses.""I don't remember anyone with a camera.""You weren't supposed to."On the wall by the window hung a framed copy of the first paper she'd ever published, her name third in the list of authors. Next to it, a newspaper clipping, yellowing at the edges. RESIDENT SAVES TEEN AFTER I-95 CRASH. She'd forgotten tha

Chapter 28 One More Time

"Stop fidgeting," Harper said, pinning the last corner of the veil into place. "You look perfect. You look so perfect I want to cry.""Don't cry. You'll make me cry.""Too late!"The wedding had come fast.On a Saturday at the end of June, St. Patrick's Cathedral was full to the doors. Every family in New York had sent someone. Half of them had sent everyone.Elena walked down the aisle in ivory silk and lace on her father's arm.Her veil was sewn all over with tiny silver stars.When she was eight, sitting blind on a bench at St. Clare's, she had told a boy she couldn't see exactly what her wedding was going to look like someday. White peonies. A veil with stars on it, because her mother called her Stellina. A lemon cake, because lemon was the only thing that tasted good anymore.She'd forgotten she ever said it.He hadn't.The cathedral was full of white peonies. The cake at The Plaza that night was six tiers of lemon.And on the head table, under a new glass dome, stood a porcelain

Chapter 29 It Should Have Been Me

"Turn that off," Julian said.Danny reached for the remote and killed the TV in the corner of the office. It didn't help.The wedding was everywhere.Julian couldn't get away from it. It was on the gossip accounts, on the news, on the screen in the back of every Miami cab. The Rossi heiress and the Valenti Don. The cathedral. The stars on her veil.He hadn't been within a hundred feet of Elena since the night at her father's house.He'd tried. God, he'd tried.He'd flown back to New York twice. The first time, Vincent's men turned him away at the gate in Bedford before he'd even gotten out of the car. The second time, he'd waited outside Conti Biomedical for six hours, and every time he came within a block of the entrance, two men in dark suits appeared from nowhere and stood in his way. He'd sent letters. Flowers. A courier with a handwritten note. All of it came back unopened.He knew who was doing it. He wasn't stupid.On the morning of the wedding, he got on a plane to New York any

Chapter 30 Not Today, I Promise

Three years later.The Heart Foundation's awards luncheon was held every spring in the grand ballroom of The Pierre. This year, the room was packed. Everyone wanted to see the woman behind Isacor.Dr. Elena Valenti stepped off the stage to a standing ovation, a glass award in one hand.Her daughter was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps with Teresa. Stella Valenti was two and a half, with her father's black hair and her mother's eyes, and she was wearing a party dress with tiny silver stars on the skirt."Mommy!" Stella threw her arms around Elena's legs. "You got a prize!""I did." Elena scooped her up. "Want to hold it?""Yes!"Elena handed her the award, carefully, and turned to look for Dante in the crowd.Instead, she found herself face to face with Julian Costa.She hadn't seen him in three years.He'd gotten thinner. There was gray at his temples, too early. The expensive suit hung on him a little loosely. The young Don who'd owned every room at the Miramar Club was gone

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