Secret Surrogate to the Mafia King novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Sunday Table
On the Sunday before my surgery, the long table in the Beverly kitchen had grown two leaves.
It still was not big enough.
Twenty-two people sat down to eat.
The housekeeper had cooked since Friday, and my father had brought his own cast-iron skillet.
"For luck," he said, and set it on the sideboard like a trophy.
He was sixty-one, with a retired mechanic's hands and a Bridgeport accent you could have parked a truck behind.
He had shaken Orazio's hand at the door and held on to it.
"So you're the freezer," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"I've been told you built a crib."
"Badly, sir."
"Good," said my father, and finally let go. "A man should build one badly. It means he read the instructions."
Gwen choked on her wine.
Nunzio sat beside her, grinning, with a mint tin in his shirt pocket and a bandage-free side.
The gray man had come with his cane.
The man in the green tie sat beside him, and the heavy boss from the west side had brought a cake.
The three of them sat in a row, a little stiff.
Between them, on a chair with a cushion, sat the doctor, in a flowered dress, doing the crossword.
Fabrizia sat across from me with her daughter on her shoulder.
She had sold the house in Elmwood Park on Friday and given the fountain to the neighbors.
She wore a red dress.
"Red," Gwen had said, at the door. "On a Sunday. In front of the mob."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Secret Surrogate to the Mafia King are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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