My Father Sold Me at Eighteen, but the Mafia Lord Was the One in Debt to Me novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Band
In April the Montalvo Cigar Company put its first new box on the shelves of every shop on 7th Avenue, and my mother's name was on the band.
I stood on the factory floor at seven in the morning with the first carton in my hands.
The rollers crowded around me in their aprons, with the bench lights glowing yellow.
The band was a strip of gold paper no wider than my thumb.
An old roller who still remembered the original had drawn it from a photograph in my mother's trunk.
R. ESTEVEZ, it said, in the old curling letters.
Below that, in smaller type, it said: Read aloud daily.
The old man from the window slid one onto his finger like a ring and cried openly, and nobody teased him.
I read that morning's newspaper in a full voice from the lector's chair.
Halfway down the front page I stopped, because the rollers had gone quiet.
A man was standing at the back of the hall in a gray suit that no longer fit.
It was Ottavio Lindner.
He had lost weight.
His glasses hung on their cord, and he held a hat in both hands.
Two men in dark jackets stood just behind him, and they were not Ricci men.
Nobody on the floor moved.
I put the newspaper down.
"I'm out on bail," he said, in a voice that carried badly.
"I was passing, and I wished to see the place."
"You've seen it," I said.
"The band is very handsome," said Ottavio.
"Your mother would be pleased."
"Do not say my mother," I said, "in this hall."
He looked at me for a long moment.
I saw that he wanted to smile and could not find the muscle.
"The bank in Clearwater has opened its books," he said.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Father Sold Me at Eighteen, but the Mafia Lord Was the One in Debt to Me are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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