Nero: Made Men novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Front Row
Two weeks later the long table on Albemarle Street ran through two rooms and out into the hall.
Sixty people sat down to it.
Aunts, cousins, the nine captains in their good suits, the fish captain's wife in a hat with a feather.
The grandmother had put the basil in herself.
I stood at the head of the table in a white dress from a thrift shop in Dundalk, with my mother's brown wooden rosary wound around my wrist.
Katia stood beside me, with a thin pink line on her cheek and a bouquet of grocery store carnations.
"If you cry, I'll cry," she said. "And I'm filming."
"You have been filming since eight this morning."
"I'm making a documentary."
A priest who had known the Bellandis for fifty years read us the short words.
Nero stood across from me in a black suit with no ring, and he looked at me the entire time.
"Do you choose him?" the priest asked.
"Every Sunday," I said. "And the days in between."
The table roared.
Nero kissed me before the priest told him he could, and Katia screamed.
When we sat, the chair at the head of the table was waiting.
The carved arms, the high back.
Aldo stood at its right shoulder with an envelope in one hand.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Nero: Made Men are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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