I Vanished with the Don's True Heir novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: The Road North

I didn't answer right away.

Orsola had come to the office door. She stood in it with a dish towel in her hands, not moving.

She could hear him.

The receiver was old and loud, and she could hear every word her son said.

"Caterina," he said again. "Please. Is it mine?"

Ten days.

Ten days of nothing, and that was what he called to ask.

Not "Are you alive?"

Not "Is she?"

"You don't get to ask me that," I said.

"I'm asking."

"You had your chance to ask. You had it at the table, with thirty people watching and my tea in your hand."

"I know."

"You said you'd seen enough."

Silence. Road noise. That turn signal, ticking.

"So you've seen enough," I said. "Don't call this number again."

I put the phone down.

My hand stayed on it.

I was shaking all over, but not the way I'd shaken in the walk-in.

This was something else. It felt good.

When I looked up, Orsola was still in the doorway.

Her face had gone the color of the dish towel.

"His voice," she said.

"I'm sorry. I should have sent you out."

"He sounds like his father." She folded the towel in half, then in half again. "No. He sounds like my father. My father used to call the bakery on Ninth Street in that voice when a delivery was late."

"Your father had a bakery on Ninth Street?"

"Half of Ninth Street had a bakery." She was looking at the phone. "Did you hear him? He said please."

"I heard."

"His father never said please in his life."

The phone rang again.

We both looked at it.

It rang four times.

"No lies," Orsola said quietly. "But nobody said you had to be polite."

I picked it up.

"I told you..."

"Don't hang up," Livio said. "I'm not asking again. I'm telling you something. Then you can hang up."

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