After My Four Childhood Friends Abandoned Me, I Inherited a Mafia Empire novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ninety Days

The will names Marta heir with a 90-day captain vote. The room laughs at her pauses until her questions stop it; Nunzio arrives to warn her she will be killed tonight.

The Lucchesi Social Club smelled like espresso and cigar smoke, and every folding chair in it was full.

Seventeen captains sat in the front rows with their wives behind them.

Two hundred men stood along the walls.

Ettore's father sat in the center chair with his arms crossed, and Ettore leaned on the wall beside him with his coat open.

I sat at the long table at the front where my grandfather used to sit.

The lawyer stood next to me with the will in a gray folder.

"This is the last will of Ottavio Lucchesi," he said, and he read it straight through.

The house was mine.

The club was mine.

The port holdings, the union seats, the cash accounts and the ledgers in the counting room were mine.

Nobody in the room said a word until he reached the last paragraph.

"One condition," the lawyer read. "The captains will vote on my granddaughter at the ninety-day memorial Mass. Twelve of seventeen can remove her. Until then, she holds everything."

Somebody in the back laughed.

Then a few more men laughed, and it spread to the walls.

"The slow girl runs the port?" a captain by the door said. He was a big man with a gold watch, and he said it to his friends, not to me.

"She can't finish a sentence before the ship leaves."

The laughter came again.

I let it come.

I put my hand flat on the table and counted, the way my grandfather taught me.

When the room finally got quiet enough to hear me breathe, I looked at the man with the gold watch.

"Who paid your son's bail last March?" I asked.

He stopped smiling.

"It was Ottavio," I said. "Forty thousand cash. It's on page nine of the book in my kitchen, in his handwriting."

"I'm only asking because I wondered if you'd like to pay it back to me this week or next."

The room was silent.

The captain with the watch looked at the floor.

I turned my head to the center chair.

"Captain," I said. "You were in the lawyer's waiting room at nine this morning with a paper of your own."

"Who typed it?"

Ettore's father kept his arms crossed.

He took a long time to answer, much longer than I had.

"My son's attorney," he said at last.

"Thank you," I said.

I didn't say anything else.

I wrote his pause down in my head, next to the gold watch's.

Ettore pushed off the wall and walked up the aisle with his hands in his coat pockets.

He stopped in front of the table.

"Cute," he said. "Ninety days, Marta. You've got ninety days, and I'll take every day of them."

"Then you'd better not waste one," I said.

He smiled, and he leaned down until his face was level with mine.

"I'll see you at the Mass," he said. "Bring your rosary."

He walked out with his father behind him, and ten captains followed.

Seven stayed in their chairs.

Some of them were looking at me for the first time in my life.

Ilario was still standing at the back wall by the coat rack.

He hadn't moved the whole time.

His bandaged hand hung at his side, and he was watching me.

When I met his eyes, he turned and went out the side door.

I hadn't spoken to him since the cemetery, and I didn't go after him.

The lawyer gave me the keys to the house, the club and the counting room.

The captains who had stayed came up in a line and shook my hand.

The last of them held on a little longer than the others and said, "Your grandfather said you were the only one who read the whole page."

I drove home alone at eleven.

The old Lucchesi house on Wilson Avenue was dark except for the lamp my grandfather's nurse had left on in the front window.

His wheelchair still stood in the hall.

I sat down on the bottom stair with my coat on.

My phone buzzed.

It was Fiamma.

"Hey, are you okay? I couldn't stop thinking about you. Lock your door tonight."

I looked at it for a long time.

I typed, "I will," and put the phone face down on the step.

At midnight someone pounded on the front door.

I got up and turned on the porch light.

Nunzio was standing outside in the rain with his borrowed suit soaked black, and his hands were shaking.

I opened the door, and he grabbed my sleeve.

"Marta," he said. "Ettore's sending two men tonight to kill you."

"Please, you have to run. They're already on the street."

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