Lost Your Mind novel · Chapter 7 of 24
Chapter 7: The Dinner
Nine days later, twelve men sat at the long table in the Corradi dining room, and every one of them had come to see who would be Don.
Candles burned down the middle.
Don Ettore sat at the head, and Donna Livia sat at his right.
Next to her, in a borrowed navy dress, sat Benedetta.
Donna Livia had taken her in the night I brought her to the estate.
She had said only, "I'm not leaving my grandchild in a church basement," and nobody had argued.
My father sat across from me.
Nico sat on my left.
He had his cane hooked over the back of his chair, and under the table, for the third time that night, his knee brushed mine.
He didn't move it.
Neither did I.
Dario came in last.
He wore a grey suit, a new haircut and a smile I knew from five years of Sunday dinners.
The Don had let him out of the east house for one night, to answer his capos.
"Gentlemen," Dario said, and took the empty chair across from his brother. "I'm glad to see everyone made it."
Nobody smiled back.
"We've all heard some story," he said easily. "I won't pretend I didn't make a fool of myself. I'm a man. I love a woman. I did it badly."
A few of the older capos shifted.
"But I'd ask you to look at what happened next." He turned his glass in his fingers. "My fiancée caught me and, within ten minutes, put herself in my brother's bed."
"Careful," said Nico, very softly.
"Is it so wrong to wonder?" Dario spread his hands. "Is it a coincidence that the quiet son who couldn't be Don now has the Ferrante docks behind him? That she arranged her little ambush so she could trade up?"
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