Page 25 of Savage Claim

“I’ll only allow you that single moment of disrespect,” Lorenzo said. “You were my father-in-law, after all. But if you insult my fiancée again, I won’t be so kind.”

That seemed to be the final insult for Salvatore Bianchi. He stood and motioned for the woman who was sitting to his rightto get up. “We’re leaving. I won’t stay here and be spat on like this.”

Lorenzo hummed. “Take your trash with you,” he said, gesturing to the man bleeding and whimpering at Salvatore’s side.

No one stopped the Bianchis from leaving…but no one followed them either.

“Now, if you’re all finished insulting my fiancée,” Lorenzo said, significantly less kind now, “we can move on to dinner. We ordered Carbone’s. Eat before it gets cold.”

CHAPTER 16

Isabella

Dinner was an awkward, near-silent affair with a mix of angry and terrified staring that was far more blatant now. I kept my head up and didn’t curl into my chair, but it was a near thing.

Once the food had been cleared, and a variety of desserts had been laid out on the sideboard, Lorenzo asked the heads of the minor families to follow him into the living room so that the meeting could begin.

That was when my duties for the night would start: I was to play hostess for the wives and anyone else left out of the actual meeting. Amalia would be at my side to help, but Lorenzo was entrusting me to keep the group entertained.

I didn’t want to think of it as a test, but it was

“Could I get anyone another drink?” I asked. Crickets. More unfriendly stares. Glancing at Amalia, who seemed to be at a total loss, I tried to keep the panic off of my face. I shook it off and squared my shoulders. “What about dessert? I’d be happy to grab anyone a plate?”

More silence. And then, I heard a giggle at the end of the table: two women were whispering, but their eyes kept coming back to me.

Okay, maybe I should try the direct approach.“Look, if you have things to say, I want to hear them,” I said.

Amalia blanched. “Isabella, no.”

The woman beside her, I believe her name was Serafina, patted Amalia’s hand. “If theputtanawants us to say what’s on our mind, then we should do that.” She looked around the dining table, smile wide and cruel, and the women around us nodded along, excited by the prospect.

“It’s fine,” I said. “As the future matriarch of the Vitali family, it’ll be good for me to know what kind of people I will be forced to interact with.”

Serafina blinked, a little taken aback by my demeanor. But she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to grill me either. “Where did you meet Lorenzo?”

That was an easy one. “He came into the clinic where I was working at the time.”

“Clinic?” another woman, further down the table, asked.

“An urgi-care,” I explained. “I was a CNA and working to get my RN. He came in because he needed stitches.” I didn’t add that he had come to that urgi-care specifically for me. It felt like a bad idea to tell anyone that I had been Lorenzo’s prisoner for months.

The news that I was working in the medical field took a little bit of the wind out of their sails. Like they couldn’t quite use thatto insult me. One point for me. “How did you end up here?” Serafina asked, sharp eyes studying me.

“Sera, that’s enough,” Amalia tried to cut in.

But there was nothing for it. I could omit, and I could spin what really happened, but I couldn’t outright lie. That would only make an even bigger mess for Lorenzo.

“I came to work for Lorenzo,” I settled on. They didn’t need to know anything about my father’s debt.

“My father told me that she was sold to Lorenzo to pay off a debt,” a snide voice said from the far end of the table. I had to suppress a groan. I should have known Gia would be here: she was the daughter of Don Gallo, after all.

One of the girls near Amalia let out a scoff. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” I said because what else was I going to say? “Luckily, it worked out for both of us,” I said, putting my hand on my baby bump, showing it off instead of trying to hide it.

The women around me had a mixture of judgment and disgust on their faces, and I decided then and there that how they felt about me didn’t matter. How Lorenzo and I met would have gotten around anyway, even without Gia’s big mouth. “I don’t know how anything works in the Cosa Nostra, obviously, and I would love to get to know some of you and learn from you.”

Amalia reached over and patted my arm. “Isabella has become a really good friend to me over the last few months.”

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