The Don's Dying Wish novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: The Removal Van

"Nobody takes anything out of my mother's house," Fabrizio said.

A few of the younger men shifted their feet.

Tiziana came around the bed with her hands out.

"She's exhausted," she told the Families. "She's had no sleep. Grief does this."

"I'm not grieving," I said. "He's alive."

"He's a body on a machine, sweetheart."

"Then it won't matter to you where the machine is."

The oldest capo was standing near the foot of the Don's bed.

He was eighty if he was a day, with a cane and a gray mustache, and I had buried his brother.

He looked at Tiziana.

Then, slowly, he looked at the Don.

Every man in the room did the same.

Ambrogio lay with his eyes closed and his mouth slack.

Tiziana followed their eyes and gave a sad little shrug.

"He can't hear you," she said. "The doctor gave him enough this morning to..."

"My son's wife decides."

The Don's voice came out of the bed like a door scraping open.

The whole room heard it.

Tiziana went still with her hand halfway to her pearls.

Ambrogio turned his face on the pillow toward the sound of the men.

His cloudy eyes were open.

"I asked you all for a wedding," he said. "You came. You stood there. You watched her marry my boy."

He stopped to breathe.

Nobody moved.

"Now she's his wife," the Don said. "Not my wife's. Not her son's. His." His hand lifted an inch off the blanket and pointed, roughly, at the door. "She decides. Let her go."

The old capo with the cane cleared his throat.

"You heard the Don," he said.

He stepped back from the bed and out of my way.

The capo beside him did the same.

It went around the room.

Old men in dark coats stepped back against the walls until there was an empty path from my feet to the door.

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