Chapter 15: The Kitchen Hall

Valerio's POV

I heard the locks go from the garden room.

They went one at a time down the hall, front door, side door, cellar door, and each one was a short clean click.

Fifty people stood in the garden room holding plates of cake and not eating it.

The old capo sat in his chair by the window with the tank hissing.

"That's Aurelio's idea of dessert," he said to nobody.

My six men stood along the wall by the door.

I had picked every one of them myself, and not one of them was looking at me.

"Stay here," I told them.

"Boss," said the youngest.

"Stay."

I went down the hall to the kitchen.

Two of Aurelio's house guards stood at the swinging door with their arms folded.

Behind them, a third man stood at the end of the hall, by the back stairs.

It was the gate guard.

He was an older man with a bad knee, and he had let her out of the front gate with her bags the night she left.

He did not meet my eye.

"Orders, Carraro," the first guard said. "Nobody through until Mr. Gallardi says."

"Whose orders?"

"His."

"Then he can tell me himself."

I stood in front of the door, and I did not move.

I was a head taller than both of them, and neither of them touched me.

Nobody had ever put a hand on a capo in that house.

The door opened from the other side.

Livia stood there in the green dress with her hands at her sides, and her mother was a step behind her.

Her face was dry.

I wanted to put my hand on her cheek, and I put it in my pocket.

"I'm going back to the table," she said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Was the Mafia's Maid, Now I'm Their Regret from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.