I Left the Underboss for the Man Who Remembered Me novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Three Slaps

"You would," I said.

"I would." Cesare's eyes were wet and his voice was steady.

"I wanted the table more than I wanted you.

"I'm saying it so you'll know this isn't the apology I gave on your father's step."

I walked around the end of the table.

Two hundred people watched me cross the floor.

I stopped in front of him, and I looked up at the face I had once believed was the safest place in the world.

"This one is for Fiora," I said.

I slapped him.

It was the third, and it was harder than the first two, and it turned his head all the way.

The sound went around the hall like a shot.

Somebody on the Orsini side whooped, a young man in the back, and was shushed by four people at once.

Cesare touched his mouth.

He did not look angry.

He looked like a man who had been waiting a long time for somebody to do it.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don't."

I turned my back on him.

Behind me the old captain was calling the Families to order.

The lawyer in gray walked quietly toward the double doors, alone, with his folder under his arm.

The three Falcone captains along the wall had not moved.

They stood with their hands half up, looking at Aurelio.

"Sit down, all of you," Aurelio said. "This is not finished."

"It's finished, Aurelio," my father said.

He had not raised his voice.

He had only turned his wheelchair a little, so that he faced the old man across the table, and the oxygen tank rattled.

"We were boys together," he said. "We stole oranges off the Fulton Street carts. I stood up at your wedding. You used my daughter to rob me, and I would have forgiven the robbing."

"Alberto."

"I will not forgive the cake."

A laugh went through the Orsini side, rough and angry and fond.

Even Aurelio's mouth twitched.

"The Families will hear the sentence now," the old captain said.

"Aurelio Falcone, you are stripped of the alliance and every right under it.

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