The Don's Secret Twins novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: Wet Hair

I didn't step back from his hand.

I looked down at it on my shoulder until he took it away.

"My children have a grandfather," I said. "He's in a box in a wall. You put him there."

The room went dead quiet.

Gaspare only smiled wider.

"Sunday at nine," he said. "Bring water. The whitewash is thirsty work."

He walked out through the kitchen, and two of the capos followed him.

Fia picked her bakery box back up off the table.

"I'm taking the sfogliatelle," she said. "He doesn't deserve them."

Ezio didn't say a word to me on the drive home.

He held the steering wheel so hard his knuckles went white.

At the first red light on St. Charles he finally spoke.

"You walked into a sit-down."

"I did."

"They could have shot you in that chair."

"They didn't. And you're still the Don."

The light changed.

He didn't go.

A car honked behind us.

He reached over without looking, took my hand off my knee and held it all the way home.

It was Halloween.

I'd forgotten.

The twins hadn't.

They'd made costumes out of Ezio's mother's linen closet while we were gone.

Coco was a ghost with eyeholes cut in a sheet that, according to his mother, had belonged to a cardinal.

Ozzie was "a lawyer," which meant one of Ezio's white shirts down to his knees.

"Lawyers wear ties," Ozzie said, holding one up. "I don't know how."

Ezio looked at the tie.

Then he knelt down on the parlor rug.

"Come here."

He stood behind Ozzie in front of the hall mirror and reached around him.

"Wide end long. Cross it over. Under. Over again."

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