Secret Surrogate to the Mafia King novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Key on the Table

Orazio takes down the intruders in her kitchen and lays his house key on her table: stay or go. Gwen comes with a bat and Tabby chooses to stay on her own terms. The director has vanished.

The man with my dish towel stood up slowly, still smiling.

"Relax, boss. We were told to wait here and say hello."

The second man pushed back his chair, and I saw the gun on his belt.

Orazio did not reach for anything.

"Who told you to wait in her kitchen?" he said.

"Mr. Sarto wants her to know he's looking out for her."

"She doesn't know Mr. Sarto."

"She will."

The man with the gun looked at me when he said it, and then his eyes dropped to my stomach.

That was when I stopped being scared and started being furious.

My father's cast-iron skillet hung on its hook by the stove, one step from my hand.

I took it down.

"Get out of my apartment," I said.

The smiling man laughed.

The one with the gun reached for his belt, and Orazio moved.

I have never seen anyone move like that.

There was no wasted motion at all, only a hand around a wrist, a crack, and the gun sliding across my linoleum.

The smiling man came at him, and I swung the skillet as hard as I could into the side of his knee.

He went down howling.

"Nice," said Orazio, without looking at me.

He put his foot on the gun, jaw set, grimly weighing the cost.

Nunzio came through the door a moment later with his parka unzipped and a paper bag of mints.

"Boss."

"Put them in the car," Orazio said. "Drive them to Ettore Sarto's front step, both of them, and ring the bell."

"Alive?"

"Alive. I want him to count them."

Nunzio hauled the smiling man up by the collar.

"The lasagna's good," the man gasped.

"It's my dad's," I said. "Don't ever say it's good."

When they were gone, the kitchen smelled of oil and cheese and metal.

My hands were shaking so hard I put the skillet down on the table to make them stop.

Orazio took something out of his pocket and set it down next to the skillet.

It was a brass key on a plain ring.

"What is that?" I said.

"The front door of my house in Beverly. It has a gate, a fence, and four men who will never ask your name."

"I'm not moving in with you."

"I'm not asking you to." He kept his voice level.

"Sarto knows you exist. He knows where you sleep."

"You can stay here tonight, and I will not argue. You can go to a hotel and I'll pay for it."

"Or I won't let you."

"Then I'll pay anyway, and you'll never know."

"That's a terrible offer."

"It's the only honest one I have."

"What's the catch?"

"There isn't one." He looked at the key.

"The house has a room for you and a lock on your side of the door."

"You come and go as you like. The key is yours, on this table, whether you pick it up or not."

I stared at the key.

No one had ever put a thing on a table for me that did not come with an invoice.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

It was Gwen.

I texted her the address in one frantic line.

She was in my doorway in nine minutes flat with a Louisville Slugger over her shoulder.

Her white hair stuck up from the sleet.

She took one look at the blood on my floor, one look at the man in the vest, and swung the bat up.

"Tabby, who the hell is this?"

"Put it down, Gwen."

"Is he the one who did this?"

"He's the one who stopped it."

She lowered the bat an inch.

"He's also the father of my baby," I said.

Gwen's mouth fell open.

"Hi," Orazio said.

"You're pregnant?"

"By accident."

"By a man you met today?"

"By a freezer," I said, and then I started to laugh until I was crying again.

Gwen put her arms around me, bat and all, and said into my hair, "Okay. Okay. I've got you."

Over her shoulder, I saw Orazio turn his face to the window.

Nunzio came back in with sleet on his shoulders and two bags from the restaurant.

"Ma'am," he said to Gwen.

"Don't call me ma'am."

"Miss."

"Don't call me miss either. I'm armed."

"With a baseball bat."

"It's a Slugger," she said. "It has a name."

He set a container of soup on my table.

Then he took a mint out of his pocket for her without being asked.

She hesitated, and then she took it.

I looked at the key one more time.

I thought about the dark stairwell, the open door, my father's leftover lasagna.

"Gwen comes too," I said.

"Done," said Orazio.

"I have my own lock."

"Done."

"My own doctor, and I go to work Tuesday and Thursday."

"With Nunzio parked a block away, not outside."

"A block is fine."

I picked up the key.

It was warmer than it should have been, from lying under the lamp.

"This isn't me saying yes to anything but a bed," I told him.

"I know."

"If I want to leave in the middle of the night, I leave."

"Then I'll hold the gate myself."

Nunzio's phone rang, and he turned away to answer it.

I watched his broad back go stiff.

"Boss," he said, after a minute, very quietly. "The clinic director cleaned out his safe an hour ago. He's gone."

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