The Famous Mafioso Hired Me to Hear Him, and the Man in the Cell Is Not Who They Convicted novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: State Your Name
The courtroom was full by eight, and nobody in it had come to see me.
I stood at the back of the Rochester courthouse in a navy blazer that I had pressed in a hotel bathroom, with my hands folded in front of me and my heart in my throat.
The parole board sat at a long bench at the front, three people in dark clothes with files and glasses of water.
On the left, behind a rail, sat the press.
A man with a camera on his shoulder.
A woman with a pad.
A row of strangers who had come for Salvatore Brancato, the most feared mobster in America, and were about to get something else.
The prosecutor, a small gray woman in a green suit, sat at the right-hand table with Leona Tewksbury's X-ray in a plastic sleeve.
Leona herself sat in the second row of the gallery, in her charcoal coat, with no pin on the lapel.
Behind her, row on row, sat the old men from the Deaf club.
There were twenty-two of them.
They had come from Buffalo and Rochester and Syracuse in their good shirts and their one tie, with their wives, and a few of the wives had brought their grandchildren.
They filled four rows.
Not one of them looked at me.
They were all looking at the door the prisoner would come through.
On the right, in the front row, in a black coat and a pearl necklace, sat Gianna Brancato.
She had a lawyer on either side.
She had her hands folded in her lap and a small, composed, reasonable smile, the face of a woman who has come to see an unfortunate misunderstanding set straight.
She did not look at me.
She did not look at the old men.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Famous Mafioso Hired Me to Hear Him, and the Man in the Cell Is Not Who They Convicted are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
← Chapter 21 · All chapters · Chapter 23 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend