The Mafia Don's Vetoed Bride novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Empty Seat

The table met that evening in the parish hall behind the church.

It was a plain room with a long folding table, and six men sat on one side of it with their coats on.

The oldest head sat at the middle with his cane against the wall.

Mama and Fabio sat on chairs along the wall behind me.

I stood, because no one had told me where to sit.

"Lanzetta's chair is empty," the old man said. "Until the table sits again, it needs someone to answer for the docks."

"Then let it be Carlo," said the head on his right. He was fifty, with rings on three fingers, and he had been friendly with Edoardo for years. "He kept the books."

"Carlo kept the lie," said the head on the left. "And he isn't here."

I looked at the door.

Carlo had left the church at noon without a word, and Fabio had not been able to reach him since.

"Fabio?" the old man said.

Fabio stood up and wiped his palms on his trousers.

"I'm not a head," he said. "I'd be a bad one. I kept quiet for five years and called it loyalty."

"That is not a refusal."

"It's a refusal. Give it to Vivi."

The man with the rings laughed through his nose.

"A girl," he said. "At this table."

"Is the rule that a Lanzetta sits," the old man asked him, "or that a Lanzetta sits who is a man?"

"The rule has always been understood."

"It has not been written. I have read it."

He turned to me.

"Viviana. Tell the table why it should hand you a chair."

I had planned a speech in the car.

When I opened my mouth, I didn't use any of it.

"Because I'm the one who found out," I said. "My father, my brothers and my fiance all knew for a week, and I was the one who stood up in front of this table's families and said so."

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