I Left the Underboss for the Man Who Remembered Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Made on the Docks

Ettore's gift is a scraper with her initials, Cesare's mother tells her to stay quiet about the baby, and a note from her father waits in the lobby.

Ettore's car was parked at the curb with the engine running.

He opened the back door for me, and I got in with the box in my lap.

"You knew I'd come out," I said.

"I knew you'd come out one day." He shut the door and got behind the wheel. "I've been parked here since eight."

"Since eight."

"Your father asked me to keep an eye on you tonight."

"My father is in a hospital bed."

"He asked me before he went in."

I unwrapped the paper.

Inside was a small steel scraper with a wooden handle, the kind pastry cooks use to lift dough off a counter.

Someone had burned my initials into the wood. G.O.

It was worn smooth where a thumb would rest.

"I made it on the docks," Ettore said. "The handle is oak off a pallet. The blade is from a paint scraper. I'm sorry it isn't more."

I turned it over in my hand.

Nobody had ever made me anything.

My throat hurt, so I said the practical thing.

"Why a pastry scraper?"

"You told your father once you liked the job. The pastry counter. He said it was a hobby." He checked the mirror. "I thought it wasn't."

"I never told him that in front of you."

"You told the cook, and I was in the kitchen having coffee."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

Then my phone buzzed.

Cesare: Come home and apologize to Fiora. Tonight. She's upset.

Then another one: You embarrassed my father. He's not going to forget it.

I read both, and I didn't answer.

"Where to?" Ettore asked.

"The apartment. I need my things."

"I'll come up."

"No. Wait for me. Please."

He looked at me in the mirror for a moment, and then he nodded.

The doorman nodded too when I came in, but he didn't meet my eyes.

Cesare's apartment was dark, and it smelled of the lasagna I had made.

I packed a duffel bag.

Two dresses, my mother's rosary, my passport, the pastry knife roll I had saved for a year to buy, my savings book.

It took twelve minutes.

On the dresser, Cesare's cologne bottle was open.

On the nightstand, I found a receipt in a small paper bag.

It was from a jeweler on Fifth Avenue, dated three weeks ago.

A baby bracelet, sterling silver.

I stood there holding it.

Fiora's stomach was bad.

I had believed him for the length of one sentence, and now I couldn't un-believe the rest.

I put the receipt back where I'd found it.

Then I thought about it, and took a photo of it with my phone.

When I opened the front door, Cesare's mother was standing in the hall in her fur coat.

She had a key.

"Gianna, sweetheart." She held out her hand like she wanted to take my duffel bag. "Put that down. You're upset, and you're young. These things happen to every woman in this Family."

"Fiora is pregnant."

Her mouth went thin.

"Who told you that?"

"Nobody had to."

"Then you understand why you have to be gracious." She said it in the voice she used for bad weather. "You keep your name, your house and your place at the table. She keeps her baby and you keep your silence. It's an arrangement."

"I've never agreed to it."

"It's older than your agreement."

I walked past her.

She caught my sleeve, and I looked at her fingers until she let go.

The doorman was at his desk, and this time he was looking at me.

He held an envelope out across the marble.

"This came for you this afternoon, miss. A nurse brought it. She said not to give it to Mr. Cesare."

The handwriting on the front was my father's, shaky, from his hospital bed.

I tore it open in the lobby.

There was one line.

Come to Brooklyn tonight, and don't tell Cesare. Ettore knows where.

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