Chapter 8: Brooklyn

The old man in Brooklyn played cards for money he didn't need.

He was eighty-four and had held the Bensonhurst seat at the Table for forty years.

Everyone in New Jersey knew his name, and nobody said it above a murmur.

He received me on Wednesday afternoon in the back room of a café.

He sat at a green felt table with a cup of espresso at his elbow.

Four silent men stood against the wall.

Santo stayed by the door with his hands folded.

"Sit, Signora," the old man said. "I knew your father."

"Everyone did," I said, and sat.

"He collected from me once, a long time ago. He was polite about it." The old man shuffled the deck. "I liked him."

"I'm not here to talk about my father."

"No. You're here because Friday night, my friend Carmine will stand at my table and ask me to take two children from their mother."

"I'm their mother."

"You're their stepmother." He said it mildly. "The law will say so, and so will Carmine."

"The law can say what it likes. They sleep in my bed when they have nightmares."

"They ask for me before they ask for water."

The old man looked at me over the cards.

"In my day, a widow wept," he said. "She wore black and she went to church."

"In your day, the widows were cleverer," I said. "They kept their husbands' books."

One of the men by the wall made a sound.

The old man's mouth moved.

I took the white envelope out of my bag and laid it on the felt.

"That's eleven thousand, four hundred dollars," I said. "It's the children's weekly share."

"I'm not buying your vote. Your vote costs more than I have."

"Then what is it?"

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Viper Donna: Stepmother's Mafia Justice from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.