The Don's Secret Twins novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: Sunday Piano

Ezio put the phone face down on the table.

"Go upstairs," he said to the twins. "Both of you."

This time they went.

He didn't say another word to me all afternoon.

He spent it in his study with the door shut and three men going in and out.

At dinner his chair stayed empty.

His mother served the twins seconds of everything and me nothing I didn't take myself.

By nine Coco had asked forty questions about the marshal and cried twice.

"He brought us coloring books," she said into my shoulder. "Every Christmas."

"I know, baby."

"Is he a bad guy?"

"I don't know yet."

Ozzie lay in the other twin bed, staring at the ceiling.

"He held my bike," he said. "He said he wouldn't let go, and then he let go."

"That's how you learn."

"I fell."

I sat between their beds until neither of them could sleep and neither of them would say so.

Then I went downstairs to the parlor.

The piano was a black Steinway, older than me, with a crack in the varnish over the middle C.

His mother kept a lace runner on the lid and a vase of white lilies on the runner.

Nobody had played it in eight years.

I could tell by the way the keys stuck.

I moved the lilies and opened it anyway.

I played the lullaby I'd played them every night in Dayton.

Slow and low, so it would go up the stairs and under their door.

Then I played it again.

Halfway through the third time I knew he was in the doorway.

I didn't stop.

When I finished, the house was quiet upstairs.

"They're asleep," I said.

"My father played every Sunday," Ezio said. "After lunch. Same three songs. My mother made him stop at three."

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