My Don Married My Pregnant Sister So I Choose His Mafia Rival novel · Chapter 26 of 32

Chapter 26: Envelope Five

Nobody at the table said anything.

Outside the window, a tug went down the Kill pushing a fuel barge, and its wake slapped the pilings under the floor.

I heard every slap.

The Bay Ridge boss leaned forward and looked at the photograph without touching it.

The old man from Howard Beach put his glasses on.

He took them off again.

Ettore didn't look at the picture at all.

He'd seen it in his sleep for two years without knowing who held the light.

He was looking at Ornella.

Cosimo laughed.

It was a light, easy laugh, the one he used at christenings.

"This is grotesque," he said. "Marcella, I knew you were angry. I didn't know you were sick."

"It's my father's camera," I said. "My father's stern light. My father's card, from the March box in my grandmother's closet. One slot was empty for two years. Now it isn't."

"Cards can be made. A boy with a laptop…"

"You said that at the christening."

"Because it was true at the christening." He turned to the old man, palms open. "Look at it. My mother. Sixty-one years old, on a pier at midnight, holding a flashlight. She's afraid of the dark. She sleeps with the hall light on. Ask anyone in Dyker Heights."

Behind him, against the wall, Ornella sat with her hands in her lap.

She hadn't looked at the photograph.

She was looking at the back of her son's head.

"Where was the card?" the Bay Ridge boss said to me.

"In a First Communion box on Todt Hill. Taped under a little white veil."

"Who put it there?"

"The person who took it out of my father's wheelhouse the morning after." I turned in Papa's chair toward the door to the front room. "Angelina."

The door opened.

My sister came in alone.

She'd taken off my raincoat.

She was in a plain blue dress that showed exactly how far along she was.

She'd put her hair up herself, badly.

There was no ring on her hand.

She walked to the end of the table and stopped across from her husband.

Cosimo's face went smooth.

"Angelina," he said gently. "Sweetheart. You don't have to do this. They've frightened you."

"Nobody's frightened me," she said. "You did that already."

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