My Fiance’s Mistress Tried to Strip – Search Me Chapter 07

My Fiance’s Mistress Tried to Strip – Search Me Chapter 07

Three days later. 

The basement was in a part of Brooklyn that didn’t make it onto any maps worth keeping–concrete walls, a single bulb, the kind of damp that got into your clothes and stayed there. One folding table. Two chairs that didn’t match. 

Nico sat in one of them. Right hand in a cast, face still yellow and purple in the places Dante’s shoe had found it. His watch was gone. His wallet was gone. His father had spent forty–eight hours dismantling everything attached to Nico’s name–accounts frozen, cards cancelled, the apartment in Midtown quietly transferred back to Ferrante family assets. By the time 

Dante was done, Nico’s net worth was a number with nothing in front of it. 

Ilaria was still wearing the dress. 

There was nothing else to give her. What she’d arrived in had been a borrowed coat and a pair of shoes that didn’t fit, because everything she’d owned had lived inside the Ferrante allowance and the Ferrante 

allowance was gone. The velvet hung off her in two pieces, held together by what was left of the seams. 

She hadn’t looked at Nico since they’d pushed her through the door. 

One of Mother’s men dropped a folder on the table. 

“Sign.” 

Nico looked at the papers. Read enough to understand what they were. A marriage certificate, already dated. A residency restriction–this borough, this radius, no exceptions. A repayment schedule for damages owed to the Vitti family, structured around dock labor rates. 

“This is a life sentence,” he said. 

Nobody answered him. 

“You can’t make us-” 

“Sign,” the man said again. Same word, same tone, like Nico hadn’t spoken at all. 

Ilaria pushed back from the table. “I’m not doing this.” Her voice was fraying at the edges. “I’m not marrying him, I’m not staying in Brooklyn, I’m not—” 

Nico grabbed her by the hair. 

It wasn’t strategic. It wasn’t planned. It was just a man who’d lost everything looking for something smaller 

than him to take it out on. 

“This is your fault.” He pulled her back toward the table, jaw tight. “You started this. You picked that 

fight, you made it worse, you–” 

She got her nails into his forearm and dragged. He swore. She swung at his face with her free hand and caught his ear, and then they were both out of their chairs and it stopped being anything organized. 

Mother’s men stood against the wall and watched them. No one intervened. No one needed to. 

When they’d exhausted themselves enough to be handled, two men stepped forward, pressed their hands onto the signature lines, and walked out. 

The yacht was the same one Mother had kept docked at Chelsea Piers for as long as I could remember. White deck, good champagne, the kind of quiet that came from being far enough from the shore that the city became just lights. 

I was already on my second glass when she came up from below. 

She sat across from me. Poured her own. The Statue of 

Liberty was doing what it always did, holding its torch up over the water like it had somewhere to be. 

Mother raised her glass. 

“Welcome back, my little queen.” 

I touched mine to hers. 

“To freedom,” I said. “To power.” 

We drank. 

The water moved. The lights on the far shore did whatever lights do at this hour–blurred a little, 

nothing dramatic. 

Those two?* 

I’d already forgotten their names. 

Some people aren’t worth the memory. 

END