Too Late. I'm Married to the Godfather novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Broken Nose

The family's old restaurant on Court Street had been closed on Wednesday afternoons for sixty years.

The chairs were up on the tables. The kitchen smelled like garlic and bleach.

Giancarlo was waiting for me by the bar with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up.

I looked at his hands first.

They were clean.

"I didn't touch him," he said, before I could ask. "He's sitting in a chair with a glass of water. Nobody touched him."

"How did you find him?"

"I've been looking since Friday night." He didn't apologize for it. "You said no bodies. You didn't say no looking."

"That's a lawyer answer."

"I pay a lot of lawyers." He reached for my hand. "He's a car thief out of Sheepshead Bay. He's done two short bids since. His nose healed crooked and he tells everyone it was a bar fight."

"How did you know it was him?"

"I asked around for a man who got his nose broken by a girl with a key five years ago." The corner of his mouth moved. "It's not a story a man forgets. His cousin told it at a wedding."

He held the door to the back room open for me.

"You lead," he said. "I'll be behind you. I won't say a word unless you look at me."

The back room was where the family ate on Sundays.

There was a long table with a stained white cloth, a picture of Giancarlo's great-grandfather on the wall and a radiator that knocked.

At the far end of the table sat a man of about forty in a Jets sweatshirt, with a glass of water in front of him.

His nose bent left at the bridge.

I had done that.

He saw me and his face changed. He knew me. Five years, and he knew me in one second.

I sat down across from him.

Giancarlo stood behind my chair with his arms folded.

"Do you know who I am?" I said.

"You're the girl from the garage." He looked past me at Giancarlo and swallowed. "Lady, I didn't know. I swear to God, if I'd known who you'd marry..."

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