Shattered Loyalty, A New Beginning Blooms novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Gianni's Opens

We opened Gianni's on a Friday night, eighteen days after the feast.

I stood at the front door at five o'clock with the key in my hand and the green awning scrubbed and new over my head.

The windows were clear for the first time in fifteen years.

Inside, Marta was shouting at a pot.

She had lost her bakery and every oven in it.

She had come to my father's kitchen the next morning with a duffel bag of knives and her mother's bread pans and said, "Where do you want me?"

I hadn't had an answer.

I had a deed, a list of debts, and a broken walk-in cooler.

Then I had a kitchen full of the smell of baking bread.

"Livia!" Marta yelled. "Is the oregano in or not?"

"It's in!"

"Then why does it smell like a church?"

"Because it is a church!" I yelled back. "It's my father's!"

She laughed.

It was the first time I had heard her laugh since the fire.

I unlocked the door.

I expected nobody.

I stood on the sidewalk in my black dress with my hands pressed together, bracing for an empty street.

The old captain came first.

He walked up the block in his grey overcoat with a cane under his arm that he didn't need.

He stopped in front of me and took off his hat.

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