He Denied Our Daughter, Now He Begs for Us novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Chair He Refused

I stepped around Giacomo's knees and went back through the gate.

He stayed down on the pavement with the roses beside him until his two bodyguards came and lifted him by the arms.

Santo shut the gate and said nothing.

His hand found the small of my back, and it stayed there until we reached the door.

The adviser came back at two.

He carried the register under one arm and a black notebook in his coat, and he asked for the kitchen table.

"I told the council at noon," he said. "Eight of the fourteen have already sent word that they will stand by the oath."

"And the other six?"

"Gianna's father is the loudest of them."

He set the register down and opened it to a clean page.

"Here is what entering her means, Mrs. Ferraro. On Sunday, at the hall, I write her name in the book. From that hour no one in the Family touches her, and the seat is hers."

"She's a baby. She can't sit in a chair."

"Until she is eighteen, a regent holds it for her. The table names him, on my advice."

"Who?"

The adviser turned to Santo.

"Mr. Rinaldi has the men, the money and the standing. He would be the regent of both Families, and the seat would be his in everything but the name."

I felt the room go still.

I had spent two months telling myself what Santo was.

A man with a plan, who needed my child's name for his own purposes and had said so plainly on the first day.

Now the plan was being handed to him on a kitchen table, with a pen.

I watched his face.

"No," Santo said.

The adviser lifted his eyebrows. "You haven't heard the terms."

"I don't need to hear them. Give it to the old capo with the white hair. He laughed at Giacomo to his face, and he's too old to want it."

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