Their Father Called Me Family, So His Four Sons Made Me Theirs novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Check
On the first of December at six in the morning, Aldo's driver knocked at my door.
He stood on the porch in a dark overcoat with a white envelope in his hand, and he spoke to a point above my head.
"Ms. Prestia. Mr. Iannucci asked me to deliver this."
Two things fell into my palm when I tore it open.
One was a cashier's check made out to me for eight hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars.
The other was my own white envelope, the one I had torn in half on his blotter, with the halves taped neatly back together.
A card lay folded inside, in Aldo's tidy hand.
Come home. Everything is forgiven.
Behind me on the stairs, four men in various stages of undress had gone quiet.
"It's the whole sum," Nico said. "Yours and ours."
"He's trying to make you owe him again," Marco said.
"I know."
I tore the check in half.
I tore it again, and again, and let the pieces blow across the yard.
"Tell him the account is closed," I said. "And tell him I kept the envelope."
The driver nodded once, and for the first time he looked at me, and I think he almost smiled.
Luca took the taped envelope from my hands without a word.
By evening it hung in a plain black frame in the front hall, set to the plaster with a level and a pencil mark.
He said nothing the entire time.
That was how I knew what it meant.
Dario's gift came at noon, a small brass plate screwed to the wall of Salt beside the door.
G. PRESTIA, GENERAL MANAGER.
"A contract and a salary," he said, shifting from foot to foot. "And you can fire me."
"Can I?"
"I'd put up a fight. I wanted you to have one thing nobody can take."
I kissed him in the middle of the sidewalk until a delivery truck honked.
Marco's gift came at four.
He knocked on my own front door, which was ridiculous and exactly right, and put a small brass stamp in my hand.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Their Father Called Me Family, So His Four Sons Made Me Theirs are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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