The Woman with the Ring (Costa Family)

A part of me was terrified to strip naked in a house full of mafia men. But something in the firmness of Primo’s voice had me believing that he wasn’t a man who would touch me without my consent.

There was that at least.

So I stripped out of my wedding dress. I grabbed a fluffy bath towel that was more like a blanket, and hung it beside the tub before climbing in.

I don’t know how long I stayed in there. But when I finally climbed out, the water had a chill to it and my fingers were thoroughly pruned.

I dried off, but had nothing to wear but my dirty work clothes or the wedding dress I’d worn for all of half an hour. Decision made, I climbed back into it, then made my way toward the door, pulling it open, and nearly tripping over the mug of coffee set on the floor.

He’d brought me coffee?

No.

That didn’t seem like something a man like Primo did.

Maybe one of his brothers, then.

Dawson and Dulles seemed a little friendlier than Primo and Terzo.

It wasn’t the fancy latte I might have gotten for myself, but it had milk and sugar which made it completely drinkable.

I drank it while flipping through Primo’s records, finding no real rhyme or reason to his collection. He had everything from Sinatra to some pop-punk band I remember some of my friends liking in high school.

Finding myself too interested in that, I left the vinyl alone and made my way back down the stairs. The men were all still in the kitchen, but this time, there were smells. Heavenly smells.

Food.

God, I was so hungry.

I didn’t even know what time it was, but it felt like I hadn’t eaten in days.

“Isabella,” Primo called, making me jolt, not thinking he could even see me from his position. “You need to eat,” he added when I didn’t respond.

“What did you order?” I asked, though it really didn’t matter what he’d ordered. I would eat one of his ties if it was smothered in enough red sauce.

“Order? No,” he said as I moved into the kitchen, finding him standing there with his sleeves rolled up, revealing strong, tanned forearms and a very pricey-looking watch.

But what was more off-putting than seeing him looking casual was the fact that he appeared to be scooping something out of a pot.

A pot.

Like he’d cooked.

No.

That wasn’t possible.

I was pretty sure none of my male relatives even knew how to turn a stove on. The women made sure of that. I came from a traditional Italian family that way. The women showed their love with food. Mountains of food for the men and children. I’d been making ravioli with my mother since I was three years old, standing on a chair at her side and putting the ricotta mix into the center of her rows of rolled dough.

“Sit,” he demanded, waving toward the dining room table toward the side of the kitchen.

I think I was too shocked to object to sharing a meal with them. My legs just led me over to the table and lowered me into a chair.

Not two minutes later, Primo was pushing a plate in front of me.

“Penne vodka with pancetta and fried ricotta,” Primo said, in the self-assured, rehearsed way of someone who made and served food frequently to guests. Which didn’t fit the image I held of him at all in my head. “There would be garlic bread if my brothers could be responsible enough to pull it out before it burned,” Primo said, shooting said brothers a hard look. “White or red?” he asked, making me look up to find him holding bottles of wine.

I slow blinked at him for a moment before I found my voice. And it was pure sass that came out of me.

“Don’t you know the answer to that from all the stalking you’ve done of me?” I asked, getting a snicker from one of his brothers. Dulles, I think. The one with a scar splitting his lower lip.

Primo’s insufferable brow lifted at the comment. “You drink them interchangeably,” he informed me. “And often incorrectly,” he said, grabbing a corkscrew and opening the red.

“Incorrectly,” I repeated as he reached for a long stem glass.

“You had lunch with your brother a week ago. You ordered some pasta with red sauce and ate it with white wine,” he informed me as he placed the deep red wine in front of my plate. “Pinot Noir would have paired better,” he told me, motioning toward the glass he’d left.

Admittedly, I wasn’t all that versed in wine. I just knew that I liked it. White, rosé, red. It didn’t matter. And since my family had always been more casual about that kind of thing, I never really learned about what went with what. We drank whatever we had on hand for family dinners.