The Don's Secret Wife Was Mafia Royalty novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: A Don's Children

Zero.

Not low. Not inconclusive.

Zero, read out in a soft voice to a room full of Dons.

"That's a lie," I said.

"It's a laboratory," Ruggero said, and held up the page so the whole table could see the letterhead. "Accredited. Independent. I picked the best."

"You picked it."

"Donna Ludovica asked me to."

Carlotta started to cry, beautifully, into a handkerchief.

"I knew it," she said. "I knew she was lying, Nonna. I'm so sorry you had to hear that song from a stranger."

I looked at my grandmother.

She was looking at the paper.

Her face was gray and still, and her hand was nowhere near the emerald.

"Thank you, Ruggero," she said. "We're finished here."

"Donna, please, look at me..."

"Show her out."

Nobody had to show me out.

I walked out on my own with Benedetta at my shoulder, past every family in Chicago, and not one of them looked at me.

The old bodyguard held the front door.

His jaw was tight.

He didn't say anything this time.

By Monday everybody on Taylor Street knew.

By Tuesday everybody on Instagram did.

Carlotta posted a photo of the lab report, with my name circled in red, under a picture of herself and Ludovica holding hands.

"Some people will do ANYTHING for money and a famous name. Praying for her babies. Family is blood."

She tagged my bakery.

Four hundred comments by noon.

Benedetta read them out loud while she wiped down the case, getting angrier with every one.

"Gold digger. Mistress. Crazy. Oh, this one says you should be arrested. This one says your bread is dry." She looked up. "Your bread is not dry. I'm going to find this woman's house."

"Leave it, Benny."

"I'm going to find her house and leave her a dry loaf."

The line at seven didn't go out the door.

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