The Don Saved Me From the Ice, Then Buried Me in the Sea novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Nine Weeks

The old men turned their heads toward me all at once.

"She has been sleeping with the diver for months," Ilaria said. "Everyone on that coast knows Santo Riva. She has been creeping out to his boat since spring."

"I saw her. I did not say anything because I wanted to protect my sister."

"That child belongs to a dead man's ghost, and she is trying to put it on my husband."

I looked at Ettore.

His face did not move, but his hand closed slowly on the edge of the table.

"May I answer?" I asked Agnese.

"Please."

I took a breath.

"I met the man you call Santo Riva two nights ago, at the bottom of the sea, with my air running out."

"Until noon today I did not know he was a Castellani. I learned his real name when his brother said it over the loudspeaker."

"Ilaria's story is that I have been with him for months."

"Then explain to me, little sister, why you needed a pirate prank, a drilled tank, and a kneeling video to get rid of me."

"If I had left Dario for another man, you could have simply waited."

Ilaria's mouth shut.

"I have a scan from last night," I said. "It is time-stamped by the doctor's machine in a farmhouse in the hills. Nine weeks."

"Dario and I have been living in the same apartment for a year."

"Ask him if he has been sleeping on the couch."

I held up the phone, and the old man at Agnese's left leaned across and took it.

He studied the screen.

He passed it down the table, hand to hand, and each man looked and nodded and passed it on, until it came back down the table into my hand.

"Dario told me himself, in the bell tower yesterday," I said. "Before he told me to give him the phone."

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