Never Cross the Mafia Don's Hidden Lover novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: Biscuit's Collar

I read my own name three times under the streetlight.

Then I looked up at him.

"Whose money?"

"Not mine."

"Elio."

"I swear on your father's stethoscope. You'd have sent mine back with something written on it in marker." He pulled one more sheet out of the envelope. "Read the last page."

It was a bill.

Old-fashioned, handwritten in blue ink on the café's order paper, in a shaky old man's hand.

CERRATO ANIMAL HOSPITAL. FOR SERVICES RENDERED, BACK DOOR, THIRTY YEARS.

Under it was a list.

One bullet, left leg. Stitches, both hands. A knife wound, a boy, nineteen.

It went on down the page and onto the back.

Every line had a man's initials beside it, and a number.

At the bottom, the capo with the cane had written: PAID. LATE. FORGIVE US.

"Every man your father fixed," Elio said. "Or their sons. They passed a hat in October, when I told them about the marshals' sale. I only went and bid."

I stood in the snow and cried.

Not neatly.

The ugly kind, with my mouth open.

Elio didn't say anything.

He just stood between me and the street so nobody could see.

"My father's fee," I said finally.

"Thirty years late."

"He'd have hated this."

"He'd have yelled," Elio said. "Then he'd have framed the bill."

Behind us, Tino's car crept along the curb at four miles an hour.

On Christmas Eve, the clinic waiting room smelled like fried fish.

Nonna had made seven kinds and carried every one down the back stairs herself.

She'd allowed Elio to carry the eighth thing, the bread, and no more.

My plywood sign was gone.

A real one hung on my father's brackets now, painted gold on dark green.

CERRATO ANIMAL HOSPITAL.

Except the C.

The C was the old burned one, black and curled, screwed onto the new board where it belonged.

The whole staff came.

The receptionist who'd quit after the fire brought a pie.

Tino sat in the corner in his good sweater with Pope asleep in his lap.

He'd taken Pope home for a weekend in October to "see if the pills held."

Pope had never come back.

"He sleeps on my chest now," Tino said, to nobody. "I wake up and he's looking at me like I owe him money."

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