My Mafia Husband Chose My Sister, So I Chose My Lost Love novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: The Ledger Room

I didn't look at the gate again.

I went through the kitchen and down the back hall, the way I had walked a thousand nights with a ledger under my arm.

Laughter came from the garden room. Somebody was singing, badly, in dialect.

The study door was open.

It wasn't a study anymore.

The walls were pale blue. There was a new crib against the bookcase, dark wood, carved along the top rail. A rocking chair. A lamp shaped like a moon.

My father's harbor painting still hung over the wall safe.

Gia was sitting on the rug in her rehearsal dress with her back against the crib.

Her mascara had run to her chin.

The back of her dress hung open where he'd torn the seam.

Renato sat in the rocking chair across from her with a glass of wine on his knee.

On the changing table beside him, in a little pile, was what was left of the wire. A sliver of black plastic, a green chip, a curl of thread.

He looked up when I came in.

"You walked," he said. "Good girl."

"Gia, get up."

She didn't move. She was looking at him.

"She can go," Renato said, with a little wave of the glass. "I don't need her. I need you."

"Gia," I said. "The kitchen door. The housekeeper will walk you down the lane. Go."

"The gate's locked," Renato said.

"Then tell your man to unlock it."

He considered me.

Then he took his phone from his jacket and typed something with his thumb.

"It's unlocked," he said. "Go on, Gia. Go cry to your sister's friends in the flower van."

So he knew about the van.

Gia got up slowly, one hand on the crib rail, the other under her stomach.

She stopped beside me.

"I'm not leaving you here," she whispered.

"Yes, you are. You're leaving him here with me."

She looked at me for a long second.

Then she went.

I heard her heels in the back hall, then the kitchen door.

I was alone with my husband in the room where I had kept his books.

Ex-husband.

It didn't feel like it, with him in a chair and me on my feet.

He drank some wine.

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