My Mafia Husband Chose My Sister, So I Chose My Lost Love novel · Chapter 28 of 32
Chapter 28: The Stand
The courtroom on the fourth floor had wood paneling the color of strong tea and a seal of the United States over the judge's chair.
On Wednesday morning, the third day of the trial, I sat in the witness box.
Renato sat at the defense table fifteen feet away, in a gray suit, with his hands folded in front of him.
The ring was on his right hand.
They hadn't been able to take it off him at the jail. It had been on since he was fourteen, and his knuckle had grown around it.
In the front row behind the prosecutor sat a small woman in a black coat, with white hair pulled back tight.
The union man's widow.
For ten years I had written her name in a column once a month and never seen her face.
She had come every day.
The assistant U.S. attorney walked me through the ledgers for five hours.
Line by line, until my voice went hoarse.
When I reached the entry marked dock, the widow looked straight at Renato.
He didn't look back.
After lunch, the lawyer in the camel coat stood up.
He was very polite. He called me Ms. Sorrentino every time, carefully.
"You kept these books for nine years," he said.
"Yes."
"You were paid for that work. You lived in a mansion. You wore diamonds. You ate at the head of the table."
"Until October."
"Until October," he agreed. "When your husband told you your younger sister was carrying the child you'd never been able to give him."
The jury looked at me.
There was a nurse in the second row, and a man who drove a bus, and a young woman with a pencil she kept chewing.
"Isn't it true," the lawyer said, "that these ledgers are the revenge of a bitter, childless wife?"
"No," I said.
"No?"
"I wasn't childless. I was medicated." I turned to the jury. "Renato had the family doctor send me birth control pills for ten years. I never asked for them."
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