Chapter 21: Every Account

Cesare's POV

I signed away the north dock on a Friday, in the back room of the Santangelo club.

The old man from the card table slid the deed across the green felt.

It was forty pages long, and the last page held a line for my name.

The old capo stood behind my chair.

"Think about it, boy," he said into my ear. "That dock is sixty cents of every dollar we earn."

"I know."

"We'll be a small family."

"We'll be a living one."

"Your father would turn in his grave."

"My father never had to look at a woman standing in front of a rifle," I said.

I signed.

The pen skipped on the last stroke, and I signed it again.

The old man from the card table read it and nodded.

"You are better than I thought, Lombardi," he said. "A man who pays a price that high without a fight is either a fool or a husband."

"Neither," I said. "Not yet."

He laughed, and he shook my hand.

Outside, the old capo lit a cigar with fingers that shook.

"A hundred and fifty men lose their jobs on Monday," he said.

"I'll place them. The east warehouses can take sixty."

"On what money?"

"My own."

"You won't have any."

"I'll have some," I said. "Not as much."

I went home, and the boy was waiting for me at the top of the stairs, in pajamas, with a drawing.

"Is Aunt Jo coming?" he asked.

"Sunday."

"Can I give her this?"

It was a drawing of a white rose with a very large green stem.

"She'll like it," I said.

He nodded and went back to bed.

I stood in the hall and held onto the banister until the feeling went out of my knees.

It took the lawyers five months to untangle every account, and the baby was due in three weeks when I laid the folder on Tillie's counter.

It was a Tuesday, in the afternoon, and the shop smelled of lilies and sawdust.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Don Played Broke to Test Me, So I Left With His Baby from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.