My Ex's Father Is the Mafia King I Am Court-Ordered to Evaluate, and I Am the Reason He Is in the Cell novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Sunday Table

Fay conducts a collateral interview at the church hall, where Eleni calls her the informer to her face and warns her to write that Kostas is unfit.

The church hall on Eastern Avenue smelled of lamb and lemon, and every woman in it stopped talking when I walked in.

It was Sunday, a little after one.

Long tables stood in rows under paper cloths.

The court requires a collateral interview, someone who knows the defendant.

The only name Marguerite Doyle had given me was the one on the hall's door.

Eleni Drakos Mavros.

I had sat at these tables on thirty Sundays.

I had been fed from her platters and kissed on both cheeks.

Now I stood in the doorway in my gray coat with my folder against my chest.

A woman at the nearest table crossed herself.

Eleni came out from behind the serving counter.

She was small and square in a black cardigan, with her hair set in a roll and a gold cross on her chest.

The rings on both her hands clicked against the ladle she did not put down.

"Look who has come to eat," she said.

She said it in English, loudly, so the room would hear.

"The informer."

Nobody laughed, which was worse.

"I'm here on a court order, Mrs. Mavros," I said. "I need an hour with you about your brother."

"She needs an hour." Eleni turned to the room. "She took my brother's coat and carried it to the police like a cat with a bird, and now she needs an hour."

"It wasn't his coat," I said.

I said it before I thought.

I saw her eyes narrow, and a quick flat line came into her face.

It was gone in a breath.

"Whose, then?" Eleni said. "Tell us. Tell my church."

I held my folder tighter.

I did not know why I had said it, except that I had believed it for eleven months and could not account for it.

"I'm asking for the interview," I said.

"And I am telling you what you will write," she said.

She put down the ladle.

At the far end of the farthest table, someone stood up so fast that his chair went over.

It was Niko.

I had not seen him come in, and I did not know how long he had been sitting there.

He was thinner than his father had said, a long narrow man in a good navy overcoat with the collar turned up.

His eyes met mine across forty feet of paper tablecloth.

He opened his mouth.

Eleni did not turn her head.

"Nikolas," she said. "Sit."

He stood a second longer.

Then he picked up his chair and set it right, and walked out through the side door.

It closed behind him with a small sound.

I had lived with that man for two years, and he had not said a word to me.

"There is your answer about my brother's coat," Eleni said, quietly now.

She came a step closer, and I smelled onion and old perfume.

Someone pressed a paper cup of coffee into my hand.

It was Marguerite Doyle, sixty, silver-haired, with reading glasses on a cord and a gray suit.

I knew her from the lists at the courthouse.

She had slipped in at the side and set the cup in my fingers like a nurse.

Her eyes went past my shoulder to a point on the wall.

"Dr. Hennessy," she said.

"Ms. Doyle," I said.

"Take the coffee."

That was all she said.

She would not look at me, and I noticed because I had spent a career noticing when people would not.

She turned and walked toward the kitchen.

"You may sit," Eleni said. "You may eat. My brother would say a hungry guest is a sin."

She lifted a hand, and a girl came with a plate of bread.

I did not take it.

"Mrs. Mavros, I need to ask about the night of the killing," I said.

"Everyone needs to know." She smiled with her teeth. "I told the police. My brother was at home with me, at his table."

"So you were his alibi," I said.

"I am his sister."

"And yet he was arrested."

"Because of you," she said.

She said it softly, and the women behind her began to murmur.

I felt the room tilt toward her, the way a crowd tilts before it decides.

I had been in a county jail with a man who had cut a girl's throat.

I had never been in a room where I was so entirely the wrong shape.

"I'll come back with questions in writing," I said. "Please think about what you want to tell the court."

"I have thought."

She took my paper cup out of my hand.

Her fingers were hard and warm, and her rings bit into mine.

She leaned in until the cross on her chest touched my sleeve.

"Doctor," she said, "you will write that he is unfit."

"I'll write what I find," I said.

"You will write that he is unfit, and the court will put him in a hospital for a year."

She straightened.

"And you will go home to your little house and your little car."

She let that sit.

"Or you will write anything else," she said, "and you will never practice in this city again."

The hall was entirely silent.

A baby began to cry at the back.

Eleni Mavros stood with my cup in her ringed hand, and I understood something that had not been in any file.

She was not afraid her brother would be found a murderer.

She was afraid he would be found fit.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend