The Don Played Broke to Test Me, So I Left With His Baby novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Seven Nods
Bruna sat alone at the long table when we walked in.
She wore black, with her pearls, and her hands lay folded in front of her.
The seven heads took their places.
Cesare stood at the head and did not sit.
I stood beside him, and no one told me to leave.
"Bruna Lombardi," the old capo said. "You asked to be judged."
"I did."
"Then say what you did."
"I sold routes to Orazio Santangelo for three years," she said. "I gave him my brother's schedule, and his woman's schedule. I put a bottle of pills in her hand and told her it was something else. I lent my son to a man with a gun."
She said each fact in the same flat voice.
Nobody at the table moved.
"I did it because I wanted my boy to be something," she said. "I'm not sorry for the wanting. I'm sorry I was clumsy."
The Dundalk man snorted.
The old capo set a thick envelope on the table.
"Before we judge her, we have a matter the table left open. The laboratory has answered."
He passed it to the Dundalk man.
The man tore it open and read it.
His face went from skeptical to grave.
"The probability that the Don is the father is above ninety-nine percent," he said. "She told the truth."
He stood, which I had not expected, and turned to me.
"Ms. Mercer, I called you a liar to your face," he said. "I'm sorry."
I nodded.
I had no words ready for a man like that.
"Then the old law's first door is closed," the old capo said. "The child is the Don's blood. Which leaves the second."
He opened a book bound in cracked red leather.
"The Don may waive the table's claim at a full table, before witnesses, when the blood is proved. Nobody has done it in forty years. It needs the Don's voice, and the table's nod."
"Why didn't you say so yesterday?" I asked.
"Because it only opens after the blood is read," he said. "Law is a stupid animal, Ms. Mercer. It does its things in order."
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