From the Don's Son's Plus-Size Girl to His Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: February

"Yes," I said.

He sat up in the dark.

"What did he want?"

"To tell me he misses me. From a boat." I put the phone face down on the ledge next to Biscuit. "I told him not to call again. I blocked him."

Killian didn't say anything for a while.

Then he held the blanket open.

"Come here. You're cold."

I went.

He pulled me down against his chest and put the blanket over both of us, and his heart was going hard under my ear.

"He called you on New Year's," he said.

"He called the wrong person on New Year's," I said. "Like always."

I felt him laugh.

That was the last time Tiziano Caravello's voice was in my life.

On the last Thursday in January, Rosario came in at noon for his meatball sub with a thin brown envelope under his arm.

He ate first. He always ate first.

Then he slid the envelope across the glass to me.

"Open it," he said.

Inside was one sheet of paper.

A deed. The address of Fennelly's on Taylor Street. A line at the bottom with a little yellow sticky arrow pointing at it.

The buyer line said Meghan Fennelly.

The price said one dollar.

I looked up at him.

"No," I said.

"Killian's second term," Rosario said. "Off the books. Never on a table again. That's what he asked for, at my table, in front of my family."

"Then sell it to me for real."

"I am selling it to you for real. For a dollar."

"That's not real. That's a present."

"It's a bet," Rosario said. "You bet me this deli on my son. You won."

"I didn't bet you the building. I bet you the keys."

"And I'm paying you the building."

He took his glasses off his head. He didn't fold them. He pointed with them.

"Meghan. I've eaten in this deli every Thursday for twenty years. Your father carried my wife. You fed my son when I didn't know he existed. Let an old man buy his own sandwich for once."

"You've been buying it for twenty years."

"Then let me buy it one more time."

My mother came out of the back with her bread knife.

"What's he doing?"

"He's trying to give me the building for a dollar."

My mother looked at the deed over my shoulder.

She read it for a long time.

"It's in your name," she said.

"It should be in yours, Ma."

"I'm fifty-two with a bad hip and one cigarette a week." She put the knife down. "I'll be in it till they carry me out. You'll be in it after. Put your name on it."

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