The Don Played Broke to Test Me, So I Left With His Baby novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Bucket

Tillie had gone to bed with the radio on and a pillow over her head.

I sat in the back room of the shop at midnight, among the buckets and the cold smell of cut stems.

I had told no one where I was.

Cesare found me anyway.

He knocked on the back door, twice, and waited.

He did not try the handle.

"Rule three," I said through the wood. "I go where I want."

"I know. I'm only asking to come in."

I opened it.

He stood in the alley with no coat and no men, and the sling was gone.

"The doctor took it off this afternoon," he said. "I told him to."

"You're not supposed to."

"I know."

He came in and sat on an upturned bucket, because there was no chair.

He looked too big for the room.

"I called the old man an hour ago," he said. "I told him I'm stepping down."

I stared at him.

"From what?"

"From the throne, Jo. The Don's seat. The table can't claim a child of the family if there's no Don to enforce the claim."

"That isn't how the old law works."

"It's how I'd work it. I'd hand everything to the old man and walk out of that house with you and a bag."

"And the north dock? The routes? The men?"

"They'd survive. Or they wouldn't."

He said it plainly, and he meant it.

I sat down on a crate across from him.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because for eight months I kept asking one question," he said. "Would she stay if I had nothing. I thought money was the thing that made people lie."

"And?"

"You stayed. You paid. You worked two jobs and never once asked me for a cent." He rubbed his face with both hands. "And I stood there with a camel coat in a closet across the city and watched. I wanted to prove something about you. I never asked what it would cost you."

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