My Husband and My Best Friend Betrayed Me on Our Wedding Day. Twice. novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Money

The lawyer brought the will out in a leather folder.

Aldo spread it on the hood of a guest's car under the portico lights.

Behind him, the police cruiser was still pulling away from the curb.

Guests stood in a half circle on the steps. Nobody had gone home.

"Read me the clause," Aldo said.

The lawyer put on his glasses.

"The company and all of its holdings pass to the first grandchild of Aldo Sorrentino, to be held in trust until..."

"That's enough."

Aldo took the pen out of the lawyer's hand.

He drew one hard line through the whole paragraph.

He signed in the margin and made the lawyer sign.

Two uncles standing close witnessed it with their own names.

"A child should never be a prize," Aldo said, to no one in particular. "That clause is why my son put a drug in a glass. It's gone."

He looked at the folder for a moment.

Then he looked at me.

"The shares go into a trust for the people who work for this company," he said. "The drivers, the cooks, the warehouse. Neither of my sons will own a majority of anything."

A woman near the front began to clap.

It was one of the cooks from the banquet kitchen, still in her apron. The clapping spread, and it did not stop for a long time.

Luca stood beside me with his hands in his pockets.

He looked at his father across thirty feet of wet pavement and gave him a short, stiff nod.

It was all he had, and Aldo took it as a gift.

The wire arrived at nine the next morning.

I was standing at the counter of the flower shop on Hope Street with a pail of ranunculus when my phone chimed.

Two hundred sixty thousand dollars.

Under it was a second line, from the same account.

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