He Left His Pregnant Bride at the Altar novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: His Own Table

At noon the next day, five men in dark coats sat around a hotel conference table in Chicago.

Ruggero had flown in every captain who could make it by plane.

He asked me to come, and I almost said no.

"You said in front of the table," he told me in the elevator. "These are my table."

So I stood at the back of the room, with my arms folded and my hair still wet from the shower.

Rosa was upstairs with the day nurse.

Nobody looked at me, except the oldest captain.

He had taught Ruggero to shoot at twelve, and he gave me a small nod, the kind you give a surgeon who has sewn up your friends.

Ruggero didn't sit.

He stood at the head of the table with both hands flat on the wood.

"I called you here so you hear it from me before you hear it from anyone else," he said. "The Poughkeepsie road, fourteen years ago. I drove the car."

A chair creaked.

Nobody spoke.

"There was a girl in the back seat, and she lived."

He took a breath.

"The girl is Nerina Tedesco."

The youngest captain pushed his chair back.

"You're telling me the girl you've been tied to for fourteen years is the daughter of the man you killed?"

"Yes."

"And you never told us."

"No."

"All that money. The Brooklyn house. The car. The doctors." He laughed, short and ugly. "We thought you were in love with her."

"I was in debt to her," Ruggero said. "It's not the same thing, and I let you think it was."

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