I Bought His Love, Then He Became the Don novel · Chapter 46 of 76
Chapter 46: Two Ways Out
Nobody in the dining room moved.
The pistol lay on the tablecloth by my plate, with a smear of olive oil on the barrel.
Pasquale's hand found mine under the table and squeezed until it hurt.
Damiano stood up.
His chair scraped, and every captain's eyes went to him.
"Augusto," he said. "Outside."
"Sit down, Damiano. This is a dinner. I'm not going to ruin it in an alley."
The old man pulled out the empty chair at the end of our table and lowered himself into it with a grunt.
The other six captains stood behind him.
"In April you came to the table," Augusto said. "You said you wanted to go build houses with Joe."
He nodded at my father.
"Good houses, I hear. Walls that hold."
Dad didn't nod back.
"So we talked about it. Two months. Seven old men, a lot of coffee."
He spread his hands on the cloth.
"There's a third way," Augusto said. "Somebody sits in his chair. Then he's just a man again. He can pour all the concrete he wants."
"Then pick one of you," Damiano said.
"One of us?" Augusto laughed. "Seven old men and one chair. We'd be shooting each other by the Fourth of July."
He turned to me.
"We want the girl who read the ledger."
My mouth had gone dry.
"Two million, three hundred and sixteen thousand dollars," he said. "Vito stole it from every man standing here. You read it out loud to us at his own table, and you didn't keep a cent. Your father's daughter."
"I sew dresses," I said.
"Vito wore rings. Look how that went."
"No," Damiano said.
He said it to Augusto, not to me.
"No. She doesn't come into that room. Then I stay."
"Damiano," I said.
He didn't look at me.
"I'll stay in the chair. Tear up April. I never asked."
Augusto looked at him for a long moment, with no expression at all under the white mustache.
Then he stood up and put his hat back on.
"That's your answer," he said. "I didn't hear hers."
He took a card out of his breast pocket and laid it by the pistol.
"The table sits tomorrow night at nine. In the back room. Bring us an answer, Lucia. Either of you."
He touched Maddie's carrier with one knuckle, very gently.
Then the seven of them went out under the red awning.
The waiter came out of the kitchen with a tray of tiramisu and stood there holding it.
"Who wants dessert?" Pasquale said.
Nobody did.
Damiano picked up the pistol and put it inside his jacket.
We drove home without talking.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–32 of I Bought His Love, Then He Became the Don are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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