Regrets of the Don: His Beloved Walked Away novel · Chapter 9 of 32
Chapter 9: The Log
Connie was already calling her mother.
She put it on speaker.
"Ma. Why is Valentina Bruno in your kitchen?"
"Concetta, it's eleven at night."
"Why is she in the kitchen, Ma?"
There was a long sigh on the line.
"She came for lunch. She's carrying a Lanza, Concetta. She told me everything. That baby is my grandchild."
Connie looked at me.
I looked at the photo of my sister's hand under her stomach.
"Does Cesare know she was there?" Connie asked.
"He came home at four," her mother said stiffly. "He had her driven back to Bay Ridge. He didn't let her finish her coffee. He hasn't spoken to me since."
Connie hung up without saying goodbye.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"It's not your fault."
"It's somebody's."
The first Wednesday in November, Connie texted me from the hospital at nine at night.
"He's at the club in Gravesend till late. Go."
I drove to Dyker Heights in my van.
The house was lit up the way it always was, every window.
I didn't use the gate code.
I rang the buzzer.
The security man came down the drive himself.
He was in his forties, ex-NYPD, with a gray crew cut and a coffee stain on his tie.
He and I had wired every camera in that house together, on our knees in the crawl spaces, eating takeout.
"Lili," he said. "You don't have to ring."
"I don't live here."
He opened the gate anyway and walked me up.
"He said if you ever came," he told me on the stairs, "I let you in. Anywhere. Anything you want."
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