The Don's Secret Twins novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Bail

The courtroom was too warm and smelled like floor wax.

Every seat on both sides was full by nine.

Reporters along the back wall.

Barones on the left, behind me.

Fia's father sat in the second row with his hat on his knees.

Severinos on the right.

Gaspare sat in the front row behind the defense table, in his gray suit, with a rosary wrapped around his hand.

Ezio's mother sat three seats away from him and did not look at him once.

They brought Ezio in through a side door.

Orange jumpsuit, hands cuffed in front, the platinum hair flat and dull.

Two days in a cell had put shadows under his eyes.

He found me in the gallery before he found his lawyer.

I held up Ozzie's folded page so he could see it.

He nodded once.

The prosecutor was young and in a hurry.

He called the cops, who said gun, grave, midnight.

He called the caretaker, who said he'd been paid to leave the gate open and didn't know by whom.

He didn't look at Gaspare when he said it.

Then the prosecutor said, "The State calls the deputy marshal."

The marshal walked up the aisle in a navy suit with a white rose in his lapel.

He passed my row close enough to touch.

He smelled like the same aftershave he'd worn every Christmas in Dayton.

He swore on the Bible and sat.

"You were Ms. Callaway's handler," the prosecutor said.

"For three years officially. Five more on my own time, because I cared about those kids."

"Did she ever tell you who fired the shots in the garage?"

The marshal looked at me.

Kind, sad, a little disappointed.

The same look he gave Ozzie when he fell off the bike.

"The first week," he said. "In a motel in Kansas. She was crying. She said, 'It was Ezio. I saw his hair under the light. I'm scared he'll find me.'"

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