Mafia Princess Returns novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Papa

My father sat at Nonna's kitchen table with his hat on his knee.

It was a small table with an oilcloth cover printed with lemons.

He looked wrong there.

Nonna put a cup of coffee in front of every chair except his.

She stood by the stove with her arms folded and watched him.

Adamo had stayed outside with his drivers, on the front step, leaning on a truck.

I could see the back of his head through the window.

"You look well, Fabiola," said my father. "The hair is a surprise."

"I did it myself."

"You were always the one with the scissors."

He turned the rosary slowly in his fingers.

"I won't pretend last night didn't happen," he said. "You embarrassed two families."

"Piero has a cut on his head and a dent in his pride."

"I'd like to dent the rest of him."

"Enough."

His voice stayed soft.

It had always stayed soft, even when he ordered men taken out into the yard, and I had mistaken it for gentleness my whole childhood.

"I came to offer something," he said.

He looked past me at Enrico, who stood by the door with a split lip and a pistol in his belt.

"Both my children are in this kitchen, which is where a father wants to find them."

Enrico didn't move.

"On Sunday the Table sits," my father said.

"If the wedding goes forward on the twenty-eighth, I will stand up at that meeting and say that I was wrong about your brother."

"I'll say the money was found. He gets his button back and his chair at the family table."

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