He Left His Pregnant Bride at the Altar novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Tiberio

I left a note on the pillow and took the monitor with me.

At six in the morning I sat down across from my brother in the hotel's empty breakfast room.

Tiberio had a coffee in front of him that he hadn't touched.

He looked up and saw the shoe in my hand, and his face closed.

"Where did you get that?"

"Ruggero's jacket."

"Does he know you have it?"

"He's asleep in my bed. You can tell me everything, or I can wake him up."

He rubbed his broken nose with two fingers.

"He never carried it for himself," he said. "He carried it for her."

"For Nerina."

"It's her shoe. She was eight."

I put the shoe on the table between the sugar bowl and the cups.

"Tell me about March ninth."

"Mari."

"Tiberio."

He drew a long breath.

"Fourteen years ago, on March ninth," he said. "A couple died on a highway outside Poughkeepsie. A black car ran them off the road at night, and their sedan went through the guardrail. The man was an accountant who'd been skimming the books both our families used. The woman was just in the car."

"Nerina's parents."

"Their little girl was in the back seat. She lived. She was eight."

I stared at the shoe.

"The Salernos did it," I said.

"Ruggero's father gave the order. Ruggero was twenty-two. His father put him behind the wheel of the black car, because he wanted him to learn."

My stomach rolled.

"He drove."

"He was supposed to nudge them. Scare them. Instead the sedan rolled. He pulled the girl out of the wreck himself. He carried her half a mile in the dark, and he's been carrying her ever since."

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