The Cyber Twins novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Gia's Toast

On Saturday the Sabatini dining room changed its seating for the first time in thirty years.

Ottavio moved the place cards himself.

He put Gia at his left hand, Nico beside her, and me at his right, in the chair where Jillian had sat for eight years.

"Papà," Gia whispered when he set it down. "That's the Key's chair."

"There is no Key," Ottavio said. "There is a Ghost, and she sits where I can hear her."

I sat very carefully and put my hands in my lap.

Nico looked at me from across the table and mouthed, *Breathe.*

I'd found out in the car that morning who had added my name to the Wall.

Ottavio had done it himself on Thursday, from the tablet in his study, the minute a guard shouted that the cranes were moving.

"I don't know how," he'd said, with a shrug. "I pressed the buttons my son showed me. I own the building."

The room was full.

Every captain on the docks sat at the table, and they had all brought wives, and every wife had a question for me.

None of them asked if I could follow the conversation.

Gia stood and tapped her glass with a fork.

"I have a toast," she announced.

"You always have a toast," Nico said.

"This one has a villain and a twist." She raised her glass. "To Wynne."

She waited for the room to quiet.

"She sat at this table for fourteen months, ate my mother's lasagna and passed the bread."

"She kept her mouth shut while the rest of us talked about things she understood better than we did."

A ripple of laughter went around the table.

"To the only person in this family who read the manual."

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