Rule One: Don’t Fall for the Don Chapter 03

Rule One: Don’t Fall for the Don Chapter 03: I Don’t Love Rafe Bellandi
I blocked the number.

I did not sleep.

By morning I’d built a fortress out of denial. Wrong number. Drunk text. Some idiot in a bar in Boston. Because the alternative meant Julian Voss had found me in nine hours, and if I let myself believe that, I’d have to get back in the car, and God, I was so tired of getting back in the car.

So instead I made a house chart.

Color-coded. Laminated. Beautiful.

The Bellandi family held a vote and destroyed me 4–1.

“Democracy,” Nico said solemnly, “is beautiful.”

“You didn’t even read it.”

“I read the part where I have to be conscious before ten.”

The one vote in favor was Rafe’s. He didn’t say anything. He just raised his hand, held my eyes for exactly one second, and put it down.

I thought about that one second for the rest of the day. That’s the problem with quiet men. You start assigning meaning to their silences like a detective with a corkboard and a ball of red string.

I started avoiding him, which was difficult, because he was everywhere.

Kitchen at six. Back hallway at seven. The dark dining room at midnight, sitting alone in a closed restaurant with a cup of coffee and his son’s chess set, playing both sides.

Every single time, I malfunctioned. Dropped things. Said “you too” when he said get some sleep.

Meanwhile, Matteo had decided I belonged to him. He followed me room to room. He left drawings on my pillow. He fell asleep against my hip on the couch one night and Rafe came in and stood there looking at us with an expression I couldn’t read, and then he left without picking him up.

“He can’t watch it,” Benny told me later. “You in that chair. Him leaning on you. It looks too much like the before.”

Then Gio dragged me into a two-hour war on an ancient video game console, and I laughed until my ribs hurt, and when I looked up Rafe was in the doorway with a face like a slammed door.

He left without a word.

“Was it something I said?” I asked.

Gio grinned. “It’s something you are.” Then, before I could ask: “Hey. Help me pick a gift? For a girl.”

Relief. Blessed, boring relief. “Absolutely.”

Except two days later I caught Benny hiding his sketchbook from me, blushing to his ears, and I panicked and announced at dinner, loudly, that there was nothing romantic happening between me and anyone in this building.

“Noted,” said Sal.

“Devastated,” said Nico.

Afterward Gio pulled me out to the alley and showed me his phone. A bracelet. Delicate, silver, a tiny sun.

“I bought it,” he said. “For her.”

And because my brain was fried and my ego was inflated, I put my hand on his arm and said gently, “Gio. I’m so flattered. But I don’t love you.”

He stared at me.

Then he laughed so hard he sat down on a milk crate.

“Nora. She works at the bakery on Coffey. Her name is Delia. I’ve been in love with her since the Fourth of July.” He wiped his eyes. “Also — obviously — you’re in love with Rafe.”

My entire body went hot.

“I am not in love with Rafe.”

“You look at him like he’s the last boat off the island.”

“I don’t love Rafe!” I said it loud. Loud enough to bounce off the brick. Loud enough that a pigeon left. “I don’t love him, I don’t even like him, he’s rude and silent and he thinks I’m—”

The alley door opened behind me.

Gio’s face changed slowly. Like a man watching a car roll toward a cliff from a safe distance.

I turned around.

Rafe stood there with a wool coat folded over his arm. He’d come out to bring me a coat. Because it was thirty-one degrees. Because he’d noticed I’d gone outside in a T-shirt.

He’d heard all of it.

His face didn’t move. That was the worst part. Nothing moved.

He stepped forward and held the coat out to me.

“Come inside, Nora,” he said quietly. “Don’t stand out here alone.”

Then he went in.

I sat on that milk crate until my fingers went numb, holding a coat that smelled like cedar, hating myself in seven different languages.

That night I locked my bedroom door. Checked it twice. Checked the window latch. Put a chair under the knob like a woman in a movie who dies in act two.

It didn’t matter.

At 3:04 a.m., I woke up because someone was breathing in my room.