The Mafia Lost His Queen novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Christmas Plans

I walked out of the bar with the card in one hand and Serena's phone in my pocket.

Nobody stopped me.

Rory walked beside me through the lobby and out the glass doors, across Druid Street, past the café where Jess was standing at the window with a tray in her hands.

She saw my face and put the tray down.

I shook my head at her.

Not now.

We went three streets under the railway, up the stairs, into the flat.

Rory shut the door and put the chair under the handle.

I stood in the middle of his kitchen and looked at the card.

Nine years. Number ten comes in June.

Then I sat down on the floor.

I didn't mean to. My legs just went.

Rory sat down on the floor beside me with his back against the cupboards.

He didn't say anything.

I cried the way I hadn't cried in the hospital, or under the bridge, or behind the organ.

Ugly and loud, with my mouth open and my face on his shoulder, for my baby and for nine years and for the girl in the cream dress who'd buckled a shoe because she thought the man at the top of the stairs didn't know.

He held on.

When I could breathe again, the light in the window had gone gray.

"I made excuses for him," I said into his shirt. "For a month. He didn't know, she took it, he didn't know. I needed him not to know."

"I know."

"Did you know?"

"No." He said it straight away. "If I'd known, I'd have killed him on that ramp and let them shoot me."

I believed him.

That was the thing about Rory. I had never once had to decide whether to believe him.

I sat up and wiped my face with both hands.

Then I took Serena's phone out of my pocket and looked at it.

"It's the feast," I said.

"What is?"

"Christmas Eve. The Lucchese house does the seven fishes. His mother runs it." I turned the phone over in my hands. "Every family comes. The Abates. The men from the West Side. The old capos and their wives. Sixty people at one long table in the ballroom."

Rory went very still.

"Gianna."

"I've cooked it for nine years. I know where everybody sits." I looked at him. "They all believed Serena once. They will not believe her twice."

"So you want to tell them."

"I want to walk in that front door alive and tell them, with every one of them watching. In my own house. At his mother's table."

He looked at me for a long time.

"They'll know I hid you," he said. "They'll know I lied to the Don's face for a month."

"Yes."

"You know what that means in that house."

"I know." I put my hand on his chest. "So don't come. Stay in London. I mean it."

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