They Spoke Sicilian Over My Head, So I Called My Don Grandfather novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: The Open Gate
My grandfather came to the stone townhouse at midnight.
He leaned on a black cane, and two men held the doors for him, and he sent both of them out of the kitchen.
I had pictured him for two years.
On the phone he had been a quiet voice with a smoker's rasp.
In the lamplight he was an old man with grey hair combed flat and my mother's forehead.
"Fiora," he said in Sicilian.
"Nonno."
He did not move, and neither did I.
Then he crossed the kitchen faster than the cane should have let him, and put both hands on my face.
"You have her eyes," he said. "God forgive me, I'd forgotten the exact color."
I held onto his wrists.
He smelled of tobacco and rain, and I was six years old again for the length of one breath.
When he let go, he sat at the table, and I sat across from him.
"You asked me for an ordinary life," he said. "I gave it to you. I'll answer for that."
"Carmine told me to ask you who opened the gate."
His hands went flat on the wood.
"I wanted to tell you in daylight," he said.
"Tell me now."
He looked at the cane.
"Carmine was my captain for fifteen years. He ate at my table and stood godfather to my son's boy. The night it began, he sent word that he'd brought men to the walls to defend us from the Calabrians."
"And you believed him."
"I opened the gate myself," said my grandfather. "With my own key. I walked out in my slippers to let them in."
Keep reading free with an account. Start They Spoke Sicilian Over My Head, So I Called My Don Grandfather from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.
← Chapter 13 · All chapters · Chapter 15 →
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