The Mafia Boss’s Dog Chose the Plus-Size Woman Everyone Ignored—Then Refused to Leave Her Side

Chapter 3

She rolled the toy across the floor. The terrifying protection dog stared at it, touched it once with one enormous paw, then grabbed it and shook it so violently that the pig’s ears slapped against his face. One of the guards coughed to hide a laugh.

Ruby smiled. “There. Your deadly assassin has discovered agriculture.”

Within minutes Caesar lay on a padded mat with the pink pig between his paws, chin resting on it, eyes finally heavy. Ruby told the guards to wait outside. To everyone’s surprise — including, it seemed, his own — Luca agreed.

He sat across from her while his dog slowly fell asleep. Not beside a door. Not beneath a desk. On his back, all four legs in the air, mouth open, chest rising and falling like something untroubled.

“He has never slept like that,” Luca admitted.

“Because he’s never believed someone else was watching the room for him.”

Luca looked at her for a long moment. “And you are?”

Ruby shrugged, one hand resting on the soft curve of her stomach. “Tonight? Whoever he decides I am.”

When Caesar finally woke, he walked to Luca without being called, the pig still clamped in his jaws. At the doorway Ruby pointed toward the toy basket. “That stays here.”

Caesar tightened his grip. Luca glanced at the destroyed delivery door and the ruined frame, and said, “Send me an invoice for everything.”

Ruby folded her arms. “Your men, the door, or the pig?”

For the first time that night, Luca Marchetti smiled. It was a small thing, barely a movement, but it rearranged his entire face.

Two days later he returned, Caesar beside him and the pink pig tucked beneath one arm like a briefcase.

“He refuses to eat,” Luca announced.

Caesar immediately climbed onto Ruby’s feet, sat down, and swallowed three biscuits in four seconds.

Ruby stared at Luca. “You may control half this city, but you are a terrible liar.”

Luca said nothing. The pig made a suspicious snort.

He returned to Harbor Light three times in six days, and each excuse was more absurd than the last. Monday, Caesar had lost his appetite — yet the dog ate four chicken biscuits before Ruby finished asking what he’d refused. Wednesday, the dog had become restless at night — yet Caesar walked straight to the pig, curled beside Ruby’s chair, and fell asleep deeply enough to snore. By Saturday, Luca announced that Caesar had developed an unhealthy attachment to the waterfront district.

Ruby looked out the window at the black sedan idling at the curb. “Did he also book the driver?”

Luca ignored her. Caesar wagged his tail and sneezed, which Ruby accepted as a confession.

The visits became routine. Caesar explored the center without checking every door. He learned to play with smaller dogs. He discovered, with evident offense, that his enormous body did not fit into beds designed for terriers. One afternoon he folded himself into a tiny wicker basket, broke the bottom, and continued sitting there as though the basket had failed him personally. Ruby laughed so hard she had to grip the counter.

“He has slept in armored vehicles without complaint,” Luca observed, arms folded.

“Apparently,” Ruby said, wiping her eyes, “dignity has weight limits.”

Caesar lifted the pink pig and dropped it onto Luca’s shoe.

Luca did not pick it up. He looked at the toy, then at the woman, then back at the toy, and Ruby watched something she could not name move through his face — as if he had just realized that the pig had been sitting in this basket longer than most of his business deals took to close.

“You keep that in your hand,” he said slowly. “The whole time he’s here.”

“Because he keeps it with him wherever he’s safest,” Ruby said. “It’s not the toy he’s holding onto. It’s the place it means.”

Luca said nothing. But he did not move toward the door when he usually would have. He stood there in the middle of her small, cluttered center — a man who owned half the harbor — holding a pig that had cost four dollars, and for a long moment he looked more lost than any of the animals she had ever treated.

Ruby tucked the moment away and said nothing. But as the black sedan pulled away from the curb, she found herself watching it longer than she meant to, wondering what a man like that was doing with a toy like this in his life.