My Don Married My Pregnant Sister So I Choose His Mafia Rival novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: The Chair

The Bay Ridge boss didn't make a speech.

He put his big hand flat on the table, the way he had when he told Cosimo the Varrone chair was empty.

"My son's in a federal prison because a man sold him at two in the morning on her boat," he said. "She found out who. She told me at my granddaughter's christening, to my face, in front of everybody, instead of whispering it in my car."

He looked at me.

"Cardone," he said. "Bay Ridge votes Cardone."

The old man from Howard Beach didn't look at me at all.

He looked out the window at the Assunta, tied at the dock with her port window shot out.

"I told her prove the marriage was real," he said. "I went to a party on a pier to watch. I saw it." He tapped the table with one knuckle. "Today I watched her husband hold a gun on the man who killed her father, and I watched her take his wrist. In front of me. In front of all of us."

He turned back.

"A girl who can stop a Sarno from shooting a Varrone can sit at this table. Howard Beach votes Cardone."

Two votes.

The Varrone chair stood empty.

Papa's chair was under me, and it couldn't vote for itself.

Everybody looked at Ettore.

He hadn't moved since we came back in.

He sat in the Sarno chair with his hands folded on the scarred wood.

He looked at me across the table for a long moment.

"Your father's letter," he said. "You have it?"

I took it out of the inside pocket of Papa's coat.

Cream paper, folded in thirds, the corner stained brown.

I held it out to him across the table.

He shook his head.

"Read them the last part. Before the pencil."

I unfolded it.

"I mean to bring this peace to the table myself, in October," I read. "With the Sarno name beside mine."

I stopped there.

The pencil line was for my sister and me.

Ettore held out his hand, and the Bay Ridge boss's son, without being asked, put a pen in it.

Ettore took the letter from me and laid it flat on the table in front of the old man.

He signed his name under my father's.

Ettore Sarno, in black ink, beside the square printing I'd learned my letters from.

Then he turned it around so it faced me.

"Two years late," he said. "Eight minutes and two years."

My throat closed.

"The Sarnos," Ettore said to the room, "vote Cardone. And the Sarnos make the peace this chair asked for. Sarno boats on Cardone piers when she says so. The Varrones kept off them for good."

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