My Stepsister Ran From the Wedding, So My Stepmother Sold Me to the Man Who Hates Her Mother novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: The Table
Nina's POV
By the fifth morning I had the keys to the dining room.
Agata had pressed the ring into my palm at breakfast, with the brass pantry key on it, and said only, "Somebody has to run this table, and I am seventy-eight."
So I ran it.
I moved the driver from the foot to the middle, because he ate fast and left early.
I put the two oldest captains where they could hear each other.
I put the cook's husband, who had not sat at that table in six years, by the window.
I rewrote the menu on the kitchen slate and sent the housekeeper to the market with a list.
She went without a word.
That night the table was set for twelve, with a clean cloth and a pot of shrimp and grits steaming in the middle.
The chair at the head was pulled back.
It was Marcello's chair.
I did not sit in it.
I took the seat at his right, and I pulled it out myself.
He came in at eight with his sleeves buttoned and stopped in the doorway.
Two of his captains were already seated, a gray-haired man with a cigar-stained moustache and a younger one with a broken nose.
They stood.
Marcello looked at the table, and then at me.
"Who moved the seating?" he said.
"I did," I said.
"I set that table for twenty years."
"You set it for a house of men who ate alone." I passed the bread. "Sit down, Marcello."
He sat.
For a quarter of an hour the talk was about the shrimp season and the price of diesel.
I listened.
The old captain said Carmela Scalise had been on the dock all day telling the deckhands the Bellancas were selling the lease to a Houston firm.
"She's lying," I said.
"Of course she's lying," said the captain. "I'm telling you what's being said."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Stepsister Ran From the Wedding, So My Stepmother Sold Me to the Man Who Hates Her Mother are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
← Chapter 7 · All chapters · Chapter 9 →
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