The Mafia Heir's Revenge Baby novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Dr. L

Juniper walks into the Corsaro table as the inventor they've been hunting and names her price for Carmine's arrogance, until her son runs in with his father's family's face.

The private room upstairs at Corsaro's still smelled like garlic and cigars.

Same red wallpaper.

Same long table with the white cloth.

Twelve men sat around it, waiting for Dr. L.

I could hear them from the stairs.

"Probably some MIT kid with a ponytail."

"Probably some old professor in a sweater vest."

"Probably wants twenty million and a handshake."

I stopped at the top step and fixed my cuff.

White suit, my hair in a low knot, the reader in my jacket pocket.

Bess was down the block in the car with Archie and a box of cannoli she'd promised would keep him there.

I walked in.

The talking stopped.

Pop sat at the head of the table in a wheelchair, a clear oxygen line under his nose.

He'd lost half his weight.

His eyes hadn't changed at all.

Gianni sat at his left, sleeves rolled, the scar through his eyebrow whiter than I remembered.

He looked at me, his expression turning stone-still.

And at Pop's right, in a dark suit and a gold watch, was my ex-husband.

Lucia sat beside him in a cream dress.

His grandmother's diamond was on her hand.

Carmine stared at me.

Then he laughed, loud, and looked around the table to make sure everyone else got the joke.

"June? You're the help? Where's the doctor?"

"You're looking at her."

The laugh stayed on his face a second too long.

"Sit down," he said. "You're embarrassing yourself. Somebody get my ex-wife a coffee."

I didn't sit.

I took the reader out of my pocket and set it on the white cloth in front of Pop.

Then I set the young man's phone beside it.

"Your son sent a boy to rob my lab on Tuesday night," I said to Pop. "He's in a Boston jail now. Read the last text."

Carmine reached for the phone.

Gianni's hand landed flat on it first.

He slid it across to his father without looking at his brother.

Pop put on his glasses.

He read it.

"The doctor has a kid. Use him."

Pop took his glasses off.

He looked at Carmine, and the whole room got colder.

"We don't touch children," Pop said. "Fifty years. We have never once touched a child."

"It was a figure of speech, Pop."

"It's in writing, Carmine. On a phone the police have seen."

Carmine's jaw worked.

He turned on me instead.

"So you built a toy. Congratulations. What do you want, June? Money? You were always good at spending mine."

"I've got three hundred million dollars, Carmine. I don't want yours."

Somebody at the far end whistled under his breath.

"The pilot starts in twenty-nine days," I said. "Every hair your men leave behind is going to have a name on it in twenty minutes. I can stop that. Or I can make it go faster."

"Name your price," Pop said.

"I already know my price."

I looked at Carmine.

"Your father's table is where you called me a dry well. In front of your aunts. On our anniversary."

He smiled.

"You remember that? It was a joke."

"You'll get down on your knees, right here, and tell the people at this table you were wrong. Then I'll talk."

The room went dead quiet.

Carmine laughed again.

Nobody joined him this time.

Lucia leaned forward and tapped one red nail on the cloth.

"Dry wells don't get to make demands, sweetheart."

I turned and looked at her.

At her flat stomach in the tight cream dress.

At the empty high chair nobody had bothered to take out of the corner.

"Five years married and no baby, Lucia," I said. "Which one of you is the well?"

The capo nearest the door laughed out loud before he could stop himself.

Two more cracked behind their hands.

Lucia went red to her hairline.

Carmine's chair scraped back.

"Sit down, Carmine," Pop said.

Carmine stood there with his fists closed.

He sat down.

Gianni was looking at the tablecloth, and the corner of his mouth was doing something I'd never seen it do at this table.

He was trying not to smile.

Pop studied me for a long moment.

"Five years she sat at my table," he said to the room, "and none of you knew she could do this."

"None of you asked," I said.

Pop nodded slowly.

"Gianni talks to you," he said. "Not Carmine. Gianni."

Carmine's face went dark red.

"Pop. She's my wife."

"She's your ex-wife," Gianni said quietly. "Pop said me."

The door at the back of the room banged open.

"Mom!"

Every man at the table reached inside his jacket.

Archie stood in the doorway in his too-big hoodie, a cannoli the length of his arm in one hand and powdered sugar all over his face.

Bess skidded in behind him, out of breath.

"Sorry," she said. "He's fast. He picked the car lock."

"They have cannoli the size of my arm," Archie told the room. "Look."

He held it up.

Nobody looked at the cannoli.

Every man at that table was looking at his face.

The dark Corsaro eyes.

The dent in his chin.

Pop's oxygen hissed.

Then, very slowly, every head turned to the old man at the head of the table, who had the same dent in his chin.

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