The Mafia Don's Vetoed Bride novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Cassio's Judgment

Cassio's POV

The doctors in Lugano told me to stay a week.

I stayed two days, and I flew home with a nurse's phone number in my pocket and the stitches pulling every time I breathed in.

On Thursday morning I walked into the parish hall on my own legs.

I had wanted to arrive without a cane, and I did.

Six men sat along one side of the long table, and a seventh chair stood empty beside them.

Viviana sat in it.

She had her hair pulled back and a gray dress on, and she didn't look at me when I came in.

I understood that and kept my eyes on the old man in the middle.

"Rinaldi," he said. "You are three days out of a hospital bed. You may sit."

"I'll stand."

"As you like. The ledger is here. The table has read it."

"Then you know it's accurate."

"Say it aloud for the minutes."

I took the white envelope out of my coat and set it on the wood in front of me.

"Five springs," I said. "Forty thousand dollars each, paid to Lanzetta through his son Carlo. A favor on the Newark piers, which I gave him twice. I did it so that his daughter would not marry Edoardo Mancuso."

"Why?"

"At first, to keep Mancuso off the docks. After that, because I wanted her to be free of him before I said a word to her."

The man with the rings made a soft sound.

"A confession of two crimes," he said. "Bribery of a rival house, and a private interest in the girl. I'd call it a plot against the Lanzettas."

"Call it what you want."

"The penalty for tampering with a marriage between houses is the loss of the piers."

"I'll sign them over today."

That surprised the table, and it surprised me.

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