Rule One: Don’t Fall for the Don Chapter 05

Rule One: Don’t Fall for the Don Chapter 05: Burnt Sugar

Friday night, Nico declared Mandatory Family Bonding.

Cards. Bad grappa. Worse decisions.

I played, because the alternative was sitting upstairs alone listening to a building that never stopped creaking, and because I’d stopped sleeping without a chair under the doorknob and a boning knife in the nightstand.

Benny got dared to eat a spoonful of chili paste and briefly met God. Sal admitted he’d cried at a commercial about a dog waiting at a window. Nico took a dare involving the neighbor’s fire hydrant and a bathrobe in thirty-one-degree weather.

Then it was Rafe’s turn, and Gio – drunk, mean, grinning – said:

“Truth. Are you in love with someone in this room?”

The table went dead quiet.

Rafe picked up his glass and drank it in one go.

“Pass,” he said.

Gio threw up his hands. “Coward!”

“Gio,” Sal warned.

“No – no, I’m the only honest man in this building-” Gio lurched up, caught his hip on the table, and the whole thing tipped.

And the pot of caramel I’d left cooling on the stove behind me went with it.

I got my arm up. Not fast enough.

The pain arrived half a second after the shouting started. Molten sugar across my forearm and the back of my hand – and then somebody’s hands were on me, hard and certain, hauling me to the sink and shoving my arm under the cold tap.

“Keep it there,” Rafe said. “Twenty minutes. Don’t move.”

He didn’t look at anyone else. He held my wrist under the water with two fingers, like I was something breakable, and his jaw was so tight I could see the muscle jumping in it.

Gio sobered up in about four seconds. “Nora. Nora, I’m so-

“I know,” I said. “I know. It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay. But he was crying, and I’ve been the person crying enough times to know what it’s like when nobody lets you stop.

The next morning I came downstairs with my arm wrapped in gauze and found a paper bag on the couch cushion.

Burn gel. Non-stick pads. Ibuprofen. And a tube of the expensive silicone scar cream you have to ask the pharmacist for, from a pharmacy in Bay Ridge

that opens at six.

No note. No name.

Rafe was at the counter with his back to me, making coffee.

“Thank you,” I said. “For taking care of me.”

His shoulders went still.

“Don’t get it wet,” he said, and left.

I don’t love Nora. Fine. Sure. A man who doesn’t love you drives forty minutes each way at six in the morning for scar cream and then can’t stay in a room with you.

Benny took me for coffee that afternoon, because Benny is the only one of them with an emotional vocabulary. Otto rode in the back seat with his enormous head on my shoulder, drooling on my coat like a gentleman.

Benny waited until I had a croissant in my hand, then said, “Who is he?”

“Who’s who?”

“You’ve checked that window every ninety seconds since we sat down.”

I looked at him. Twenty-three years old, paint under his fingernails, the kindest face I’d ever seen..

And I almost told him.

“Nobody,” I said. “Bad breakup. I get jumpy.”

He let it go, which is its own kind of kindness. Then he tapped my collarbone. “Where’s the necklace from?”

“Welcome gift, right? One of you left it on the step my first night.”

He frowned. “Nora. Nobody in that building has ever bought jewelry in their life. Gio wraps presents in a bodega bag.”

Something cold slid down the back of my neck.

“Also,” Benny added, stirring his coffee, “I know you’re in love with Rafe. I

clocked it at cards. You looked at him like the answer mattered more than air.”

“Benny-”

“I won’t say anything. I’m just pointing out-” he shrugged, “-he took the pass. He didn’t say no.”

We drove home as the light went orange over the cranes. I was laughing at something he said – actually laughing – and then we turned onto Van Brunt.

Parked at the curb across from Santa Lucia, under the dead streetlamp, was

a black Maybach with Massachusetts plates.

Engine running. Exhaust curling in the cold.

The man behind the wheel lifted one hand and waved at me.