My Father Sold Me at Eighteen, but the Mafia Lord Was the One in Debt to Me novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Anselmo

The hall did not clap, and I was glad.

Applause would have made it a show, and it was a funeral for something.

The men in the aisle filed out slowly, and the women gathered their babies, and the old rollers at the windows nodded to me one by one as they passed.

I sat in the lector's chair with the ledger in my lap and found I could not stand.

Luca stood beside me and did not say a word.

His hand hung at his side, an inch from my shoulder.

He did not touch me, and that was the right thing.

Then the aisle cleared, and there was only my father.

Anselmo Montalvo came up the middle of the hall alone, in his navy suit, with his hat in both hands.

He was sweating, though it was not hot.

He stopped at the foot of the platform.

He looked at me, and at Luca, and at the old woman in the front row, and at the empty benches where the Bay had been.

"Gracie," he said.

"Mija."

"Papi," I said.

"That was beautiful," he said.

"The way you read it.

"Your mother would have wept."

I said nothing.

He turned his hat in his hands.

"I'd like to talk about my share," he said.

The hall was almost empty.

A few rollers still stood by the door, pretending to talk.

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