He Took His Childhood Friend Away, So I Came Back a Mafia Heiress novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Sunday Table

Rocco came home on the thirtieth day, and I was already sitting in his house when he did.

Nobody had asked me to.

Nunzio's question about the stove had sat in me for a month, and I had decided it could wait until I had the man in front of me.

At six o'clock Pasquale and Aurelio and I walked up the Santoro drive, past the cousins smoking on the steps and the two men who had left their guns on my father's desk.

They didn't stop me.

They looked at the five old men behind me, and at the black car behind them that was full of dockworkers in their good coats.

I wore a dark green dress that I had bought with my own money, from a shop I had chosen myself.

I had cut my hair to my shoulders.

I wore no ring.

The key sat on the outside of my collar, where anyone could see it.

The dining room was set for twelve, the same as every Sunday.

I took the chair at the foot of the table, the one Rocco's father used to keep for guests.

Then I changed my mind and went up to the head, and sat in Nunzio's.

Rocco's mother, at the side, put her hand over her mouth.

His cousins stopped talking.

Nunzio came in last, looked at the chair, looked at me, and sat down in the one beside it without a word.

At seven the front door opened.

I heard Rocco's voice in the hall, tired from the flight, saying something to his mother's housekeeper.

I heard Sabrina laugh.

Then they walked into the dining room together, her hand on his arm, her pale pink coat open over a dress I hadn't seen before.

Rocco stopped in the doorway.

He had gotten brown from the sun, and his hair needed cutting.

He looked at the chair, and the woman in it.

"Gemma?" he said.

It wasn't recognition.

It was a question.

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