The Don's Wife Died With His Secret Heir novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Breaking the Third Term

Alessia's POV

By Sunday night Nadia and her son were back in the flat on Federal Hill, and the villa was quiet for the first time since I had walked into it.

The lab had taken swabs from both boys on Saturday.

They had promised an answer in five days.

Luca slept in the west wing with the door locked and the key on a ribbon around my neck.

I did not sleep at all.

At one in the morning I went down the back stairs in my bare feet, because I could not walk past the light under the study door for a third night.

I pushed it open.

Santo was behind the desk in his shirtsleeves, with a glass of whiskey he had not touched.

A photograph from our wedding lay in front of him.

"You were laughing at something Ottavio said," he told me without looking up. "I don't know why that's the one I keep."

"Don't."

"I'm not touching you. I'm talking."

"You're staring."

"That's not in your terms."

I stayed in the doorway.

He had not shaved, and the stubble made him look like the man I had married and not the Don I had left.

"Where did you get that burn?" he asked.

I turned my arm over, and the pale ridge ran across the back of my wrist.

"An oven door at the bakery. Mauro's mother dressed it."

He nodded, and a muscle in his jaw jumped.

"I'm sorry about Mauro. I'd have given him a house for what he did."

"He didn't want a house."

"I know. That's why I liked him."

The clock on the mantel ticked.

I should have gone back up the stairs.

"The last night, at the bedroom door, you told me my other table was getting cold," Santo said. "Nadia's gone. There's only the one table now, with an empty chair at it."

"Santo."

"I haven't slept in our bed since you died. I sleep in the chair in the library."

"That's your own fault."

"Yes."

He stood up and did not come around the desk.

He put both hands flat on the wood, and his knuckles went white.

"You made a rule, and I'm keeping it," he said, low and rough. "Say the word and I'll walk out of this room and never mention it again."

I crossed the carpet until I reached the edge of the desk with the whole width of it between us.

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