Seven Days to Disappear from My Mafia Stepbrother novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: The Feast

I finished the zeppole.

I wiped the sugar off my fingers on the napkin.

Then I crossed Atwells through the crowd with the flip phone in my hand.

The band was playing the second of its four songs.

People saw me coming and went quiet in a ring around me.

I walked up to the Don's table.

The chair across from Ugo was empty.

I pulled it out and sat down.

Every capo at that table looked at me.

One of the younger ones half stood.

"Sweetheart, that seat's not..."

"She sits," Lucio said from the head of the table.

He didn't raise his voice.

The young capo sat back down.

Ugo smiled at me across the white cloth.

"Well. The girl from the desert. Come to apologize at last?"

"No."

"Then go stand with the women, sweetheart. This is family business."

My mother stood behind his chair in her navy silk.

She was looking at my face, the way I'd told her to.

She was about to enjoy something.

I set the flip phone on the tablecloth between the bread basket and the wine.

Face up.

Open.

Ugo glanced at it.

Then away.

It was just an old phone with tape on the hinge.

He didn't know it.

He'd never once seen the Ferryman's phone.

Nobody had.

Under the table, I saw his hand move to his jacket pocket.

He took out the little burner from the guitar case and held it below the edge of the cloth where he thought nobody could see.

His thumb moved.

He was doing exactly what I'd told him.

Do not text me again until you are sitting down.

The flip phone on the tablecloth lit up.

It buzzed against the wood under the cloth, loud, rattling the knives.

It buzzed again.

I let it.

Every man at that table watched it ring.

Ugo stared at it.

His face didn't understand yet.

His hand did.

It stopped moving under the table.

I picked up the phone and read the screen out loud, clearly, so the whole table could hear.

"I am sitting down. U."

Nobody breathed.

"That's tonight's," I said. "Here's the first one. Sunday the twelfth of July, the night of your table in the back room."

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