The Mafia Heir's Revenge Baby novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Chair

The old man wouldn't go to the hospital.

He came to on the floor of Corsaro's with his head in Gianni's lap and red wine soaked through his shirt.

The paramedics were already coming through the door.

Pop looked up at them and said, "Home."

"Sir, your heart..."

"Is mine," Pop said. "Home."

By Sunday night he was in the hospital bed at the top of the house.

The oxygen machine was turned up as high as it went, and the doctor who was afraid of him had stopped pretending.

"Tonight or tomorrow," the doctor said to Gianni on the landing.

Gianni nodded.

He went back in and sat down by the bed and didn't get up again.

The house was full.

The aunts were in the kitchen making food nobody ate.

The cousins sat on the stairs.

The capos stood in the upstairs hall in their dark suits, hats in their hands.

At nine, Pop opened his eyes.

"Bring them in," he said.

Gianni went to the door.

They came in one by one, twelve men in a bedroom built for two, and stood along the walls with their shoulders touching.

I stood at the window.

I'd tried to go downstairs, and Pop had looked at me and said, "You stay," and so I stayed.

Pop looked at the men for a long time.

"You've been waiting to hear who gets the chair," he said.

Nobody answered.

"Nobody gets it."

The capo by the door, the one who'd laughed at Lucia that first night, lifted his head.

"Pop?"

"It dies with me," the old man said. "Tonight. My father built it, and I sat in it. It's done."

"Pop, the men..."

"The men will do what you tell them. And you'll tell them it's over. The machine is in every police car in the city by next week. The ones who are smart will be in another business by Christmas. The ones who aren't will be in a cell."

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