Super Godfather 2: My Ex Dumped the Wrong Man novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Man
Camille walks into Sunday dinner engaged to a rival, and Amos announces ten trials. Preston's men take Suzette.
Six weeks ago I was towing cars for sixty-one dollars a hook.
Tonight I sat at the head of a dinner table in Chestnut Hill, and nobody ate until I picked up my fork.
That was my grandfather's rule.
I was thirty-one years old, and I still wasn't used to it.
Suzette sat on my right with her hand under the tablecloth, resting on my knee.
She was twenty-eight, and she was the only person at that table who had known me when I smelled like diesel.
She squeezed once.
I picked up my fork.
Everybody started to eat.
My uncle Desmond cut his steak.
He had wanted this chair for thirty years, and my grandfather had given it to a stranger with a tow-truck license.
"Heard you towed a Bentley Thursday," Desmond said, loud enough for the whole table. "Did you hook it by the bumper?"
A few of the old men laughed into their wine.
"Front axle," I said. "Owner tipped me forty bucks. I gave it back."
Suzette smiled into her glass.
At the far end, my grandfather Amos lifted two fingers off the tablecloth, and the laughing stopped.
He was seventy-four, white-haired, and he leaned on a cane with a silver head.
He had found me in September, after my mother's name turned up in a file he'd kept for thirty years.
She had died nine years ago, and she had never once said she was a Wetherill.
Amos had looked at me across his study and said, "You have my father's jaw. Sit down."
Then he had named me his heir in front of every captain in Philadelphia.
The front door opened.
Heels clicked in the hall, and a woman's voice laughed softly.
I knew that laugh.
I had heard it every night for four years, until the night she packed her car.
Camille Dray walked into the dining room in a green silk dress with her blonde hair cut to her jaw.
She was thirty now.
She had told me two years ago that she refused to live poor, and then she had left a house key on my kitchen counter.
Her hand was tucked into the arm of a thin man in a navy suit.
He wore a gold signet ring and a smile.
"Amos," said the thin man. "Forgive the late hour."
"Preston Haverford," my grandfather said. "You were not invited."
"I was, by your son."
Every head turned to Desmond.
Desmond kept cutting his steak.
Preston Haverford was thirty-eight, and his father ran every dock south of Market Street.
He had been waiting a long time for my grandfather to get old.
"Allow me to introduce my fiancee," Preston said. "Camille."
Camille looked down the table, and her eyes landed on me.
They went wide.
She looked at the chair I was sitting in.
She looked at the old men who were all watching me, waiting for my signal.
She looked at the suit Suzette had picked out for me, which fit better than anything I had ever owned.
"Jonas?" she said.
"Camille."
"You're," she said, and stopped.
Preston's smile twitched.
"He's the grandson," Desmond said pleasantly. "Camille, you two know each other?"
"I used to live with him," Camille said.
She said it too fast.
"Above a tow yard," I said. "You hated the smell."
Somebody coughed.
Camille's cheeks went red.
Suzette's hand did not move from my knee.
Amos tapped his cane once on the floor.
"Sit, both of you," he said. "You are here because I have an announcement, and I want the Haverford family to hear it from me."
Preston pulled out a chair for Camille.
She sat, and she could not stop looking at me.
I had been dumped by a woman who thought I was nothing.
Now she was staring at me.
"My grandson has held the chair for six weeks," Amos said. "Six weeks is nothing."
He looked at me.
"Ten trials, Jonas. One every week or two, as I see fit. Pass all ten, and the chair is yours when I die."
"And if I fail one?"
"Then it goes to the next man at this table."
His eyes moved, very slowly, to Desmond.
Desmond put down his knife.
"The first trial begins tonight," Amos said.
"A certain warehouse owner owes this family four hundred thousand dollars. You will collect it before midnight."
"Whose warehouse?"
My grandfather smiled for the first time all evening.
"Ask our guest."
Preston Haverford raised his glass to me.
Suzette pushed her chair back and bent to my ear.
"I need air," she whispered. "Don't you dare chase me. Win your dinner."
She walked out through the hall door.
I watched her go, and I watched Camille watch her go.
Nobody at the table spoke.
Four minutes later, my phone buzzed on the tablecloth.
It was a photo of the back seat of a car.
Suzette sat in it with a man's gloved hand over her mouth, and her green eyes were furious.
Under the photo was one line.
"Collateral, Mr. Wetherill. Midnight."
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