The Don's Dying Wish novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Choosing

"Open your hand," Tiziana said.

I didn't.

She crossed the room in three steps, and the fur slid off one shoulder.

"I said open it."

"He's not dead yet," I said. "You can't have his things."

She slapped me.

It was fast and flat and it turned my head halfway to the window.

My ear rang.

The new nurse made a small sound in the doorway and put her hand over her gold cross.

"Thief," Tiziana said. "In my house. At one in the morning. With a dying man's ring."

I put my hand to my cheek.

It was hot under my fingers.

Behind the curtain, nobody moved.

I knew what it was costing him.

I knew because I'd watched him lie still under Fabrizio's hand, and this was worse.

"Where's my stepson?" Tiziana said. "Who's watching him while you rob his father?"

"My grandmother."

"An old woman and a corpse-washer." She laughed. "He'll be dead by Christmas in that place."

I turned away from her.

I went to the Don's side, the side away from the curtain, and took his right hand off the blanket.

I opened his fingers.

I put the ring in his palm and closed them again.

"He gave this to my husband," I said. "Not to me. Keep it for him."

The old man's fingers locked around it.

He turned his blind face toward his wife.

"Get out of my room, Tiziana," he said.

It was barely a voice.

She heard it anyway.

Her mouth went thin and red.

"You're confused, my love," she said. "The girl upset you."

"I'm going," I said. "She can see me off."

I walked past her to the door.

I made sure my heels were loud on the wood.

She came after me, because a woman like that has to have the last word on her own stairs.

The new nurse came after her.

Behind us, I heard the Don's nurse shut his door very gently.

All the way down the front stairs, Tiziana talked.

The debt.

The fifteen days.

The waiver I'd signed.

What happens to girls who steal from the Brancatos.

I didn't hear half of it.

I was listening past her, for the servants' stairs at the far end of the house.

A door.

Then nothing.

In the front hall, Tiziana caught my arm.

"You'll never set foot in this house again," she said.

"I know," I said. "I've got a house."

I walked out.

The guard on the steps looked at my cheek and then at his shoes.

I drove down the gravel drive with both hands on the wheel.

At the bottom of the hill I pulled over and sat there with the engine running.

My face throbbed.

My hands were perfectly steady.

They only started shaking when my phone lit up with a text from the driver.

GOT HIM. HOME IN 20.

It was nearly three when I came in the side door at Guarino & Sons.

The kitchen light was on.

Marcello was standing at the counter.

Not sitting, not leaning on the chair.

Standing, in my father's cardigan, with a bag of frozen peas in his hand.

He came across the kitchen to me without touching a single thing on the way.

He put the peas against my cheek, very carefully.

"I heard it," he said. "Behind the curtain."

"I know."

"I didn't come out."

"You weren't supposed to."

"I know that too." His jaw was tight. "I lay on her carpet and listened to her hit my wife, and I counted. Like I counted everything else for two years."

"What did you count to?"

"I'm not going to count anymore, Vittoria."

He took the peas away and looked at my face under the light.

Then he bent his head and kissed the place she'd hit.

Once.

My breath went out of me.

"Seventeen days," he said against my cheek. "Seventeen days tonight since you shut that wheel."

"You've been counting that too."

"Every hour."

He straightened up and held out his hand.

His fingers were steady.

"You said I could walk you up those stairs when I was ready," he said.

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