“She’s Just Bed Practice,” The Mafia Heir Smirked—Unaware The Curvy Girl Understood Italian…
He claimed his family was away and asked to join d…
He claimed his family was away and asked to join dinner.
My mother let him in because small towns remember old loyalties longer than they should.
At the table, Ethan acted charming. He passed the mashed potatoes. He complimented the diner’s pecan pie. He laughed with relatives who still assumed we would marry.
Then Miles called.
I stepped into the hall and talked for twenty minutes. When I hung up, Ethan stood beside the Christmas tree.
“Who was that?”
“My boyfriend.”
The word hit him harder than a slap.
“You don’t have a boyfriend.”
“I do now.”
His smile disappeared.
The next morning, Marian Russo came to the diner carrying a leather folder.
She asked to speak privately in the back booth, the one beneath my grandfather’s framed Army photograph.
Inside the folder was my biological mother’s will.
I had seen a copy before, but this one contained an attached codicil witnessed by Marian and filed under a sealed probate number.
My mother had owned the land beneath Seville’s Diner.
She had also invested in Luciano Logistics before her death.
Those shares, now worth millions, had been placed in trust for me.
The trustee was Don Vincent Luciano.
Ethan’s father.
“Why was this hidden?” I asked.
Marian’s mouth tightened.
“Because Vincent planned to transfer the shares to you at twenty-one. Ethan recently discovered that. Three days later, someone submitted a deed claiming your mother sold the diner property before she died.”
My hands went cold.
“Did she?”
“No.”
Marian slid a photocopy across the table.
The signature was forged.
The notary stamp belonged to a man who had been dead six years.
And the bank officer who approved it reported directly to Ethan.
The betrayal had stopped being personal.
Now it had a paper trail.
Then I understood why Marian had told me to keep every recording, message, bank statement, and receipt.
PART 5
Ethan came to Cambridge three weeks later.
He waited outside my lab in a charcoal coat, leaning against a black SUV like he owned the sidewalk.
“I wanted to explain.”
“No.”
“I made mistakes.”
“You made choices.”
Miles stepped between us. Ethan smiled at him, but the smile never reached his eyes.
Two nights later, Miles was jumped behind a neighborhood bar.
He came to the hospital with a split lip, two cracked ribs, and bruises shaped like boot heels. One attacker had spoken Italian. Another had called Ethan “young boss.”
At the hospital, Miles’s jacket sat in an evidence bag beneath his bed. The television played a college basketball game with the sound off. He tried to joke about missing our movie, but each breath hurt. I signed the police statement with a hand that had finally stopped shaking.
The police took photographs.
Campus security pulled traffic footage.
A delivery driver’s dash camera caught the black SUV leaving the alley.
Ethan denied everything.
He summoned me to the parking lot behind Saint Michael’s when I returned home for the weekend. Four of his men stood near the dumpsters, cigarettes glowing in the cold.
“You think I ordered that?” he asked. “One of them got overprotective.”
He kicked the youngest man and barked in Italian.
“Tell her you acted alone. If you mention the deed, I’ll bury your brother too.”
The man’s face went gray.
Ethan turned to me and switched to English.
“He says he’s sorry. You wouldn’t understand the rest.”
I pressed the record button inside my coat pocket.
“No,” I said. “I understood all of it.”
Silence.
Even the church bells seemed to stop.
Ethan stared at me.
I repeated his words in Italian, perfectly.
Then I repeated the sentence from graduation morning.
“Cynthia was only practice.”
His arrogance collapsed so quickly it almost looked like fear.
“You knew?”
“Every word.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough.”
He reached for me. I stepped back, and two Bellweather police cruisers rolled into the lot.
Marian had insisted I share my location.
Officer Jenna Cole approached with one hand near her holster.
Ethan’s men scattered.
I handed her my phone.
On it were his threat, the assault admission, and the reference to the forged deed.
Ethan looked at me as if I had broken some sacred rule.
“You recorded me?”
I met his eyes.
“You taught me to keep evidence.”
The officer told him not to leave town.
He laughed in her face.
That laugh ended when federal agents walked into Luciano Community Bank on Monday morning.
PART 6
The bank search exposed more than a forged deed.
Investigators found emails between Ethan, Lucas, and Vice President Harold Pike. They had planned to call my parents’ diner loan early, seize the property, and force me to negotiate through Ethan.
One message from Lucas read, She’ll come home when the diner is on the line.
My foster brother had laughed in Ethan’s bedroom.
Now he had tried to take my family’s livelihood.
That hurt differently.
Lucas called me seventeen times.
On the eighteenth, I answered.
“I didn’t know about Miles,” he said.
“You knew about everything else.”
“I was trying to protect Mom and Dad.”
“You forged a dead woman’s name.”
He started crying.
I hung up.
Sylvia arrived at Marian’s office the next day wearing sunglasses and carrying a second phone.
Ethan had been cheating on her for months. When she confronted him, he threatened her father’s dealership loan.
So she saved everything.
Texts.
Voice messages.
A secret contract promising her family favorable financing if she publicly presented Ethan as stable and respectable during his succession campaign.
She placed the phone on Marian’s desk.
“I thought I was the chosen one,” Sylvia said. “Turns out I was marketing.”
I almost felt sorry for her.
Almost.
The final document came from Don Vincent himself.
His family trust required the next chairman to remain free of felony charges and conduct damaging to the company. Ethan’s succession vote was scheduled for Thanksgiving weekend at the Bellweather Country Club.
Vincent had protected his son for years.
But he had also protected the empire.
