He Chose Another Heir, Now He Wants Me Back novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Table

Alessio's POV

At six in the morning I sat on a hospital bed in a paper gown, and my uncle walked into the room with six witnesses.

They filed in behind him in their black overcoats and lined the wall.

Ruggero carried a folded document in one gloved hand.

He had not slept either, and for once his face showed it.

"Nephew," he said gently. "I have come to do you a kindness."

"You have come to keep me out of that theatre."

"I have come to see that, if the worst happens, the seat does not go to a woman who ran away." He laid the paper on the tray table. "Sign it, and your boy is safe in my house. Refuse, and the Families will say the Don went under the knife without leaving an order."

Serena stood by the window with her arms folded.

She had said nothing since the guards took the man away.

I looked at the paper, and I knew every line without reading it.

It named Nico my heir and Ruggero his guardian.

It gave my uncle everything I had spent six years holding back from him.

"The risk of the operation is one in two hundred," the surgeon said quietly from the door. "It is small, Signor."

"But it is real," Ruggero said.

"Yes," I said. "It is."

I took the paper and tore it in half.

Ruggero's gloved hand curled.

"Give me a pen," I said to the nearest witness. "And paper. Any paper."

The man looked at Ruggero, and Ruggero did not move.

Serena crossed the room and put a pen in my hand.

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