Married to the Don

Chapter 2 Episode 2

He shakes his head, still looking down at the floor, but I can tell by the lowering of his shouldersthat he knows exactly who I am. The nervous glancing out the front window before I even walkedinside confirmed that he was nervous. He had every right to be.

“It’s been weeks,” he says in a near-whisper.“Yeah, well, without my brother around to help out, I’ve been a little behind. Trust me, I would

have come here sooner if I could have.”

“Damien was my friend,” George says. “I had to do what I could to make sure he got justice.”“My brother delivered his justice.”George glances up at me, and I feel the urge to look away. We both know that isn’t true. Still, Ihold his gaze, narrowing my eyes until he looks away. George is a brave man, but he’s smart, too. Heknows I hold his life in my hands right now.

He had to be brave to take the stand he did against the Kornilov Bratva. Anyone who has evenconsidered it in the past received a visit from some of our enforcers. They all changed their mindspretty quickly. The only reason George slipped through the cracks was because the prosecution kepthis identity anonymous until the very last minute. We didn’t know he’d take the stand until he wasbeing sworn in. By then, it was too late to do anything about it.

I’m angry with George for putting my brother in jail, but completely separate from that, he made

me look weak. It was under my leadership that a witness finally dared to come forward and testify.No one would ever have considered doing such a thing when my father was in charge. That’s part ofthe reason I’m holding a gun to his head.

The other reason is that the most important and difficult tasks should always be handled by theleader. My father would disagree—he disagreed with me on many different points—but I learned alot from watching him lead. He delegated everything, sending his men around the city to do hisbusiness. They feared him, but they didn’t respect him. I want their fear and their respect alike.

If I’m not willing to get my hands dirty, then how can I ask anyone else to do it for me? So, in thismatter that intimately involves my brother, I want to be the one to pull the trigger. I want to show mymen that I’m not above them, but with them. For my Bratva. For my family.

“I have a family,” George says, his voice shaking. “A wife and children.”“I don’t care.”George looks up at me, his eyes wide. His face is wrinkled, and he looks tired. “My wife wanted

to leave town as soon as I testified. She wanted to change our names, but I told her I wanted to stay.”

“That was your mistake,” I say coldly.“Was it?” he asks. “If your father had still been in charge, I never would have dared.”Just as I thought. I ready my finger on the trigger. Enough people have told me I’m too weak to bea boss; I don’t want to hear it from an overweight liquor store owner too. I’ll kill him before he getsthe chance.

“But you’re fair,” he says, surprising me.I let the gun slip slightly as he talks.“At least, I believed you to be a fair man,” he says. “It’s the only reason I kept my family here.

Because I didn’t think you would kill me for telling the truth.”

He meets my eyes for another second before looking back down at the floor, and I’m glad. I don’t

want him to see what I’m going to do next.

AS I WALK BACK into the parking lot, a man is idling in front of the store, squinting towards the storehours. That sign says it should be open, but the neon one is dark. He rolls down his window. “Are youopen?”

If he’d gotten out and tried the door, he would have found it unlocked, but he didn’t. He asked me.

So, I shake my head. “Nope.”

The man curses under his breath. “Update your hours!” he yells as he screeches out of the parking

lot, in search of another place to quench his late-night thirst.

I just cost George some business, but he isn’t in any state to care.

bend over and wrap the towel around my hair. The towel is still damp from drying my son offafter his shower, but it should help dry my hair a little bit before we have to head out into thecold. Walking around with frozen, crunchy hair all morning is not my idea of a good start to the

day. Though, neither is showering in a gym locker room, when I really think about it.

My jeans feel sticky against my skin, and I make a mental note to set aside some of my tip moneyto make a laundromat run. My shirt also sticks to my skin, but that’s because the towel was too wet todo much good drying me off. I pinch the thin material and try to pull it away from my breasts, butwhen I let go, it resumes clinging to my every curve.

I look up and scan the shower area again. There are no partitions or even curtains. Just one longrow of showerheads protruding from a white tile wall. Even though we’ve been coming to this samegym for months, I can’t seem to grow comfortable with the arrangement. I always feel like I’m beingwatched. It’s why Theo and I shower so early in the mornings. The first arrivals of the day are still inthe middle of their workouts when we show up. It gives us fifteen or so uninterrupted minutes toshower before any of the other members can complain to the front desk about a child being in theshowers.

If they’re so worried about children seeing a bunch of naked adults, perhaps they should springfor stalls, I think to myself. That would probably require a higher membership fee, however, whichwe don’t have the money for. And showering in full view of other women beats smelling like bodyodor and diner grease, so I’ll take what I can get. Though, I’ll have to find another solution beforeTheo gets much older. At this age, he’s too busy playing to pay any mind, but that won’t last muchlonger.

Theo makes a loud roaring sound, pulling me from my thoughts. I turn around just in time to seehis little face squished in fury as he squeezes a bottle with all his might, squirting shampoo up into theair in a tall arc.

“No, no, no!” I blurt out, rushing forward to yank the bottle out of his hands. I squeeze the sides ofthe bottle lightly, trying to assess how much shampoo we lost. I’d be annoyed even if it was the cheapdollar store shampoo, but I found this bottle in one of the showers last week. It’s a salon-gradeshampoo, way out of our price range and probably left behind by one of the stay-at-home moms aftera private Pilates class. Probably one of the same moms who glower whenever they see me waiting inthe lobby with Theo for the bus. I didn’t mind taking the bottle because whoever left it probablywouldn’t even notice. Things like shampoo are easy enough for them to come by that they don’t worrymuch about it.

“It’s a volcano,” Theo says playfully, rounding his lips around the final “O,” emphasizing it in a

way that makes it hard to be angry. The little sucker is cute when he wants to be.

“This volcano is dormant from now on,” I say, tucking the bottle into my stained duffel bag. “We

can’t afford to waste shampoo right now, buddy.”

He frowns, both because he got in trouble and because he doesn’t understand why. Theo makes

that face whenever I talk about our finances.

I kneel in front of him and pat his clean hair. Even in the terrible fluorescent bathroom lighting, Ican see the gold streaks in it, the lightness that didn’t come from my mostly Dominican roots. Theshape of his face isn’t like mine either. His is sharp—always has been, even when he had a layer ofbaby fat covering his cheeks—whereas mine is oval. I run my hand from his hair, down his cheek, andlift his chin until we’re looking into each other’s matching brown eyes.

“That was a cool volcano, though.”His eyebrows rise, and he smiles. “Really?”“Really. I loved it, but next time, you need to ask Mama if it’s okay, okay?”“Okay,” he repeats, still smiling at my compliment.I Velcro his shoes on, pressing my thumb down over his toes to see how much longer this pairwill last before I need to buy new ones. They fit for now, but he grew out of the last pair almostovernight, so I know I’ll need to allocate the money sooner or later.