Mafia Princess Returns novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Study

I went back to Todt Hill on Tuesday night, alone, through the front door.

Enrico wanted to come.

Adamo wanted to come.

I told them both that a man with a gun would make my father stop talking.

A daughter with a photograph would make him start.

The guard at the gate looked at my short hair and let me through without a word.

My father's study was on the ground floor, at the end of a long hall lined with framed photographs of Ferrara weddings.

He sat behind his desk in his shirtsleeves with a glass of brandy and the lamp low.

The window behind him showed the white tents still standing in the garden, empty, soaked from the rain.

"Come in, Fabiola," he said without looking up. "Close the door."

I closed it.

I walked to the desk and laid Adamo's phone on the blotter with the photograph on the screen.

My father looked at it for a long time.

Then he took off his wire glasses and set them down.

"Who took this?"

"A tow driver."

"Basile."

"Does it matter?"

"No." He gave a small sigh. "No, I suppose it doesn't. It was always going to turn up."

He poured a second glass of brandy and pushed it across the desk to me.

I didn't touch it.

"February fourteenth," I said. "You and old Barbieri. Four in the afternoon. And at six o'clock the Table took Enrico's button."

"Yes."

"What did you sign?"

"A peace."

He said it very gently.

"For a decade I have held the Narrows against the Barbieris and their friends. I have buried a dozen men."

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