The Don's Widow Carries His Heir novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Room Four

Lia walks into the ICU alive and puts her ultrasound in her dying husband's hand, then answers her sister's accusation in front of the family, until Antonia orders everyone out but her.

Nick drove.

He ran two lights on Eddy Street and talked on the phone with one hand.

"How many? ... Who's with him? ... Keep the mother in the room. Nobody leaves."

He hung up and looked at me.

"I'll take you to my sister's place in Pawtucket. You stay there."

"No."

"Lia, half of them think you're dead. The other half are going to want you dead when they hear about the codes."

"He's my husband."

"He just sent you to the river."

"Then he can look at me when he dies."

My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated it.

Nick didn't argue again.

He parked in the ambulance bay and came around for my door.

The trauma floor smelled like bleach and wet wool.

Castiglione men filled the hallway. Coats still on. Guns badly hidden.

One by one they saw me.

The talking stopped all the way down the hall.

One of the old capos crossed himself.

Room Four had glass walls and the curtain was half open.

Massimo lay in the bed with tubes in his mouth and his chest wrapped in white.

Antonia, his mother, sat beside him in a black cardigan, holding his hand in both of hers.

And Marisa stood at the foot of the bed in my red dress, crying into a tissue.

She looked up.

The tissue stopped halfway to her face.

"Lia?"

I walked past her.

"You're supposed to be..." she said, and then she caught herself.

I sat on the edge of the bed by his other hand.

His eyes were open.

They were glassy and slow, but they found me.

He knew me.

I took the folded paper out of my back pocket. I'd carried it for twelve days. It was soft at the creases.

I opened it and put it in his hand.

A black and grey picture. A tiny white curl in the middle of it.

The clinic code across the top. My patient number. The date and the time.

09/14 10:40.

His fingers moved on it.

His eyes went to the date and stayed there.

I watched him do the math.

Ten forty in the morning, I was on a table on the East Side with cold gel on my stomach.

Ten forty-two, someone at our house sent four hundred thousand dollars to Carbone Provisions.

Massimo's eyes filled.

He tried to lift the paper higher, and couldn't.

"I was going to tell you on your birthday," I said. "I bought a card with a stork on it. It's in my nightstand."

Antonia made a sound I'd never heard from her.

She leaned over the bed and looked at the picture in his hand.

Then she looked at me.

Massimo pulled at the tube in his mouth.

A nurse rushed in and pushed his hand down.

His eyes moved past me.

Past his mother.

To the foot of the bed, where my sister stood in my dress.

They stayed on her.

Then he looked at Nick in the doorway, hard.

The monitor started to scream.

People in scrubs pushed me off the bed. Somebody shouted numbers. Somebody pulled the curtain shut in my face.

I stood in the hallway with Antonia's shoulder pressed against mine, and neither of us moved away.

It took ten minutes.

The doctor came out and said it to Antonia, not to me.

Antonia didn't cry.

She nodded once, very slowly.

Marisa cried loud enough for both of us.

Then she pointed at me.

"She did this."

Every head in the hallway turned.

"She sold the Carbones the safe houses," Marisa said. "Massimo told me tonight. He found out about the money, and she knew where he'd go. Ask her. Ask her where she's been all night."

Two of the men in the hall had their hands inside their coats.

I didn't step back.

"Smith Hill was one of four codes," I said. "I gave all four of them to you, Marisa. In August. In my kitchen. You cried and said you were scared to be alone."

She went white under her makeup.

"That's a lie."

"You wrote them on the back of a receipt from my bakery. You put it in your phone case."

The capo who'd crossed himself looked at her phone.

It was in her hand. Clear case. Something pale folded behind it.

She put the phone behind her back.

"And where was Lia tonight?" one of the younger men said. "Somebody tell me that."

Nick stepped between me and the hallway.

"With me," he said. "At the river at Fox Point. On his order."

He let them hear it.

"I drove her there myself. She was standing at the railing when the call came. She couldn't have set up anything."

"Then why is she breathing?" the young one said.

Nick looked at him until he looked away.

"Because I didn't feel like it."

Nobody said anything after that.

Marisa grabbed for Antonia's arm. "Mrs. Castiglione, please. You know me. I've been here for him. I've been here every day."

Antonia looked down at the hand on her sleeve.

She took it off, one finger at a time.

Then she lifted her chin to the whole hallway, and every man in it straightened.

"Everyone out," she said.

They started moving.

Marisa grabbed her coat off a chair and went with them.

I turned to follow.

"Not her," Antonia said.

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