He Chose His Pregnant Mistress. I Was the Bratva Princess. novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Fyodor's Table

On Monday morning I baked.

I did it in the banya's old kitchen at five, with my sleeves rolled and flour to my elbows, and nobody dared come in.

By seven there were four dozen lemon tarts cooling on the long steel counter.

My hands felt like mine again.

The Sorokin table was in the big room above the steam baths, a long scarred oak board that had been my grandfather's.

Twenty men sat at it, with their hats on their knees.

I had eaten under that table as a child.

My father took the chair at the head, in his black wool coat.

He pulled out the chair on his right, which had been empty since my mother died.

"Sit," he said.

I put the first tart on a plate in front of him, and I sat.

Twenty men stared.

"Eat," my father told them. "She made it."

They ate in silence, awkwardly, looking at their plates.

One of the foremen, a big grey man with a broken nose, put down his fork first.

"Fyodor Andreyevich," he said. "With respect. Who speaks for the yards this morning?"

"I do," my father said. "And she does."

"A woman at the table."

"Two women," said my father. "Her mother sat there for twenty years and you never complained."

"Her mother kept her mouth shut."

My father opened his, and I put my hand on his sleeve.

"Let him say it," I said.

The foreman looked at me.

"Greco is finished," he said. "His captains are leaving him. The docks on the Calumet are open, with half a hundred trucks and four warehouses and nobody to guard them. Give the word and we take everything by Friday."

"That is a lot of freight," said another man, rubbing his hands.

A mutter of agreement went round the table.

I waited until it ran out.

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