Chapter 7: For the Baby

"Give that back," I said.

Cordelia turned the picture to the light.

"Ten weeks," she read. "So you knew at the gathering. You stood there in that green dress, knowing."

"Give it back."

Gianni stopped beside her chair.

He didn't touch her.

He just held out his hand, palm up, and waited.

She looked at his hand and laughed.

"You were so much more fun when you drove me," she said, and put the picture in it.

He brought it to me.

I put all three back in my bag and snapped the clasp shut.

Cordelia was already typing on her phone.

"You're not even a patient here," I said. "Are you?"

She didn't look up.

"Have a nice day, Talia."

My mother had to be walked to the car.

She was shaking with anger the whole way back to Bay Ridge, and she called Cordelia a word I didn't know she knew.

Renzo came the next morning.

It was seven o'clock and the crew was unloading our first legitimate container, forty tons of Sicilian floor tile for a contractor in Park Slope.

Two black Escalades rolled through the gate without stopping.

Renzo got out of the first one.

Four soldiers got out of the second.

The forklift stopped.

The crew stopped.

Renzo walked across my yard in a camel overcoat and polished shoes, stepping around the puddles.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Don's Wife Was Never Weak from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.