The Mafia Heir's Revenge Baby novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Rude Questions

Gianni didn't move from the doorway.

He looked at me.

We'd agreed. Not until it was public and safe.

It had been public for two hours.

I nodded.

Gianni came into the room and sat down on the rug in front of Archie.

He sat the way he had at the chessboard, long legs folded, elbows on his knees.

"Yes," he said. "I'm your dad."

Archie looked at the reader.

Then at Gianni's face.

Then at the reader again.

"It says ninety-nine point nine eight," he said. "That's not a hundred."

"It's close."

"Mom says close is how bridges fall down."

"Your mom's right about most things."

Archie set the reader down on the rug very carefully, screen up.

He took a breath.

I knew that breath. It was the one he took before he asked a museum guard how old the mummy was when it died.

"I have questions," he said.

"Okay."

"Did you know about me?"

"No," Gianni said. "Not till Friday. I'd have come."

"Mom said my dad didn't want children."

"Your mom thought your dad was somebody else."

Archie thought about that.

"Carmine," he said.

"Yeah."

"He's not very nice."

"No."

"Is he going to be sad?"

Gianni took a while with that one.

"He's going to be a lot of things," he said. "You don't have to worry about any of them."

Archie nodded.

"Do you have a dog?"

"No."

"Can you get one?"

"Probably."

"What's your favorite planet?"

"Saturn."

"That's a lot of people's," Archie said, a little disappointed. "Do you snore?"

"I don't know. Nobody's told me."

"I'll tell you," Archie said. "Why did you go to jail?"

Bess woke up on the pull-out, saw the two of them on the rug, and very quietly closed her eyes again.

"Because my brother did something bad," Gianni said. "And somebody had to go, and I said I'd go."

"That's dumb."

"It was."

"You should've said no."

"I know that now."

Archie picked at a thread on his dinosaur sock.

"Can I still call you Gianni?"

"You can call me whatever you want."

"Okay," Archie said. "Gianni. Last question."

"Okay."

"Do you want me?"

The room went very quiet.

Gianni put his big hand out, palm up, on the rug between them.

"More than anything," he said. "Since about the second chess game."

Archie looked at the hand.

Then he put his small one in it and left it there, and yawned enormously, and leaned sideways until his head was on Gianni's knee.

He was asleep in under a minute.

Gianni didn't move for an hour.

On Sunday, Pop sent a car for Archie and me.

He wasn't at the long table.

He was in the front room by the window, with a checkerboard set up on a TV tray.

The aunts were in the kitchen, pretending not to listen through the door.

"So," Pop said to Archie. "You beat my son at chess."

"Twice."

"Chess is for show-offs. Sit."

Archie sat.

They played three games of checkers.

Pop won the first one fast, and Archie stared at the board for a long time afterward without saying anything.

Archie won the second.

He won the third in about four minutes, and then explained to Pop exactly which move had lost it.

Pop listened to the whole thing.

Then he laughed until he had to take the oxygen mask.

"Gianni beat Carmine at checkers once," Pop said, when he could breathe. "Carmine broke his arm for it."

Archie looked at him.

"Did Daddy cry?"

Every sound in the kitchen stopped.

Pop looked at the little boy for a long time.

"Yes," he said. "And I told him to stop."

"That was a lie."

"It was."

"You shouldn't do that."

"No," said the old man. "I shouldn't."

Later, while Archie was in the kitchen getting stuffed with cannoli by six aunts, Pop asked Gianni to take the chair.

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