Lost Your Mind novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: What the Cane Costs
Giulia tells the Don the Ferrante ports follow the better man, Dario is silenced, and Nico gives her one hour and one question: why him?
Nobody answered me.
Donna Livia looked at Nico first, and then at her husband.
Don Ettore slowly turned the gold ring on his right hand.
Everyone in that chapel had assumed I would be the next Donna beside Dario.
Now they were doing a different sum, and I watched it move across their faces.
"Nico?" Donna Livia said at last, very softly.
Nico didn't move from the doorway.
"Giulia," his mother said. "Child, think. His leg."
"I've thought about it," I said.
Seven years ago, a gunman had fired at Dario outside a restaurant, and Nico had thrown himself in front of the bullet.
Dario walked away without a mark.
The bullet went through Nico's right thigh and he spent a year learning to stand.
After that, the whole family quietly agreed he would never be Don.
Nobody said it out loud, but they all knew.
"I've thought about it," I said again. "I've watched him run your books for years, Donna. I've seen him fix what Dario breaks before his father even hears about it."
"A man the capos won't follow," the Don said, flatly.
"A man they'll follow if his father puts him in front of them," I said.
My own voice surprised me.
I turned to the Don.
"Don Ettore, my father's ports aren't a gift. They're a vote. The Ferrantes decide who gets them."
My father's eyes sharpened.
He understood at once.
This wasn't a woman who had been hurt, throwing a fit.
This was the Ferrante family telling the Corradi family that the ports would follow the better man.
Don Ettore understood it too.
He had run his organization for thirty years without once being told what to do by anyone's daughter, and he looked at me now with something close to respect.
Dario finally got it.
I saw the color drain out of his face and come back twice as hard.
"Giulia," he said. "Have you lost your mind?"
"Shut up," said his father, without turning around.
Dario's jaw worked.
He glanced at the two men holding him, and then at the wall of faces, and for the first time that morning he looked afraid.
Donna Livia finally seemed to decide something.
She walked to me and took my hand slowly.
Her eyes were red.
"I wanted you for a daughter from the day you were seventeen," she said. "I never thought I'd get you by this road."
"I know, Donna."
"Nico," she said, without taking her eyes off me. "Come here."
He came.
His cane tapped once on the stone, then again, and the whole room waited for every step.
He stopped an arm's length away.
Up close, I could see a muscle ticking in his jaw.
"Mama," he said. "Papa. May I have a minute with Giulia?"
"Alone?" Don Ettore said.
"Alone."
The Don looked at his younger son for a long moment.
"You have an hour," he said. "Then you come to my study, both of you, and I hear what you decide."
"Papa," Dario said. "You can't."
"You will not speak," the Don said, "until I tell you."
Two guards led Dario out through the side door.
Benedetta went after him, a guard's hand under her elbow, her face so white I thought she'd fall.
At the door she turned back.
She looked straight at me.
I couldn't read what was in her eyes.
My father stopped beside me as the room emptied.
"Are you sure?" he asked, under his breath.
"No," I said.
"Good." He almost smiled. "Sure people are the ones who get shot."
He left me there with Nico.
The chapel went quiet.
Stained glass threw red and blue patches over the floor, and Nico stood in one of them, leaning on his cane.
He looked at me for a long time.
He didn't look like a man who had just been handed a gift.
He looked like a man who didn't believe in gifts.
"In five years of Sunday dinners, you've said maybe twenty words to me," he said.
"That's not true."
"It's close." His voice was even. "Dario was the one you looked at. I was the one who carried your coat."
I opened my mouth, and nothing came out.
"So I have one question before I say yes," he said.
He took one step closer.
"Why me?"
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