Chapter 17: The Apology

Gianna's POV

Cesare knelt on my father's front step in his good black coat, and forty men from the Orsini crews watched him do it.

He opened the little box.

Inside was a ring, a plain old gold band with a small diamond, not the big flashy stone I had left in the cake.

"This was my grandmother's," he said, loud enough for the yard. "I brought it because I was ashamed of the other one."

Nobody in the yard made a sound.

The cook, in the doorway behind me, had folded her dishtowel into a very small square.

"Gianna," Cesare said. "I forgot your birthday three times.

"I took your dinner and your cake and I gave them to a woman who had no right to them.

"I shamed you in front of two hundred people.

"I have no excuse. I'm asking you to forgive me."

It was a good speech.

He had a voice that could make a room believe it.

I saw the old captain from the hall at the back of the yard, with his hat in his hand, and I saw him wipe his eye.

I looked for Ettore, and found him at the edge of the crowd by his car, with his arms at his sides.

He did not look at me.

He looked at the ring.

I knew then what he was thinking, because I had thought it about myself all my life.

That I was the kind of girl who said yes.

"Get up, Cesare," I said.

"Not until you answer."

"I'll answer you standing, then. Get up."

He rose, and brushed off his knee, and the box was still open in his hand.

"Say it all again," I said. "Say why."

"I told you. I was a fool."

"Why did you forget? The third year in a row, on the one day your father spent six months reminding everyone about?"

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Left the Underboss for the Man Who Remembered Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.