Never Cross the Mafia Don's Hidden Lover novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: What It Cost

Nobody moved.

Rain dripped off Elio's sleeves onto my kennel floor.

The old capo with the cane straightened up off the wall.

"Elio," he said. "You understand what you just said."

"I understand."

"In front of witnesses."

"That's why I said it in front of witnesses."

Elio didn't look at him.

He was looking at me.

I was standing by the surgery table in an old gray T-shirt and leggings, with dog spit on my wrist and my socks soaked through.

I didn't fix my hair.

"Not to them," I said. "If you've got something to say, you say it to me."

"I came to say it to you." He took one step into the room. "In front of them. You left my house in front of my men. You don't get an apology in a hallway."

Dina put down the towel she was holding.

Tino stood at the back door with his arms folded and his face.

"Go on, then," I said.

Elio wiped the rain out of his eyes.

"A week before your wedding, I knew," he said. "A man in my crew came to me on a Friday. He told me my cousin had bought a cop named Brophy. Two days later that cop offered to sell me a name at the Arden."

The wives looked at each other.

"On May thirtieth I called the hotel. I asked which suite the groom had. I asked if the bride was Cerrato. They told me yes."

"You knew my name," I said.

"I knew your name. And I let you walk down the aisle." His voice stayed level, but his hands didn't. "In front of your grandmother. To a man I knew was coming upstairs to shoot me. You can hate me for the phone call I didn't make. I'd rather you did it to my face."

The younger capo bent his head over his shepherd.

"And when he shot me, I went over the screen into your suite on purpose. It was the one door on seventeen he wouldn't kick in. I used you for a door, Viola."

Nobody in my surgery suite was breathing.

"That's the list," he said. "Now what it cost you."

He counted it on his fingers.

"Your wedding. Your name on the noon news. Your father's sign. Your father's truck. Your grandmother's picture in a casserole dish. A month of this whole city calling you mine, when I never asked you." He lowered his hand. "I can't give any of it back. So I'm going to pay for it the only way that costs me anything."

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