The Don's Secret Twins novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Speak Now
Marin walks Ezio's twins up the aisle of his wedding and tells the whole cathedral his uncle killed his father, then sees the marshal who hid her sitting beside that uncle.
The priest asked if anyone knew a reason these two should not be joined.
I did.
I had two of them, and they were holding my hands.
The cathedral doors banged shut behind us.
Four hundred heads turned at once.
Coco's light-up sneakers blinked red on the marble.
"Mom," she whispered. "Everybody's looking."
"Good," I said. "I need every one of them."
I walked up the center aisle of St. Louis Cathedral in the jeans I'd driven thirteen hours in.
Yesterday a man had walked into my kids' school in Dayton and told the office he was their uncle.
They don't have an uncle.
By the time I got there, he was gone.
My front door was open when we got home.
Nobody took the TV.
Somebody took both their birth certificates.
The marshal who'd hidden us for eight years didn't answer his phone.
Not the first call, not the twentieth.
So I packed the car and drove all night to the one place nobody could shoot me quietly.
A mob wedding with four hundred guests.
At the altar stood the bride in white lace, her veil still down.
Beside her stood the man I'd spent eight years hiding from.
Ezio Severino.
His hair was still bleached almost white.
The black ink still climbed out of his collar and up the side of his neck.
He turned around, and his gray eyes went from me to the children and stopped there.
Ozzie had those eyes.
So did Coco.
A woman in the fourth pew said, "Madonna mia," and crossed herself.
Two men in dark suits stepped into the aisle in front of me.
"Ma'am, this is a private ceremony."
"Then he invited too many people," I said, loud enough for the choir loft.
I walked around them.
They let me, because Ezio lifted two fingers.
I stopped at the altar rail.
Eight years, and he had one word for me.
"Marin."
"Ezio," I said.
"You've got a lot of nerve walking into this church."
"I've got two reasons. Look at them."
He didn't want to.
He looked anyway.
Coco stuck her chin out at him.
Ozzie scowled at him, exactly the way Ezio was scowling at me.
In the front pew an older man in a gray suit rose to his feet.
Silver hair, a soft face, a gold cross on his tie.
Gaspare Severino.
The uncle who raised Ezio after his father died.
The last time I saw him, he was wiping his hands on a handkerchief beside a garage elevator.
He smiled at me.
"Nephew," he said gently. "That's her. The piano girl from the hotel. The one the Barones paid to keep you upstairs while they killed your father."
The whole church drew one breath.
Across the aisle, a whole row of Barones went stiff.
The bride's head turned under her veil.
I'd practiced this for thirteen hours on the interstate.
I didn't say it to Ezio.
I turned around and said it to the pews.
"The Barones didn't kill his father."
Nobody moved.
"I was in the staff garage of the Hotel Severino at 3:12 that morning. I was going to my car. I saw who did it."
I pointed at the front pew.
"He did."
My finger didn't shake.
I was proud of that later.
"He shot his own brother twice beside the elevator, and then he wiped his hands and pushed the button."
The cathedral exploded.
Men stood up. Somebody's baby started screaming.
Gaspare didn't even raise his voice.
"Eight years," he said, "and that's the story she came up with."
"Eight years in witness protection," I said. "Because of you. And yesterday your man came for my children."
Ezio's jaw locked.
"My uncle was in Baton Rouge that night."
"Then he was in two places at once."
The bride reached up and lifted her own veil.
She was dark-haired and younger than I'd guessed, with red lipstick and dry eyes.
Fia Barone.
Her family had buried a son in the war that came after that night.
She wasn't looking at Ezio.
She was looking at Gaspare.
Ezio came down the altar step.
Then, in front of every family in New Orleans, he crouched down in front of my son.
I heard his own men stop breathing.
"What's your name?"
Ozzie folded his arms.
"You're supposed to say yours first. That's manners."
Somebody up in the choir loft snorted.
Ezio's mouth twitched before he could stop it.
"Ezio."
"Ozzie. She's Coco. We're seven." Ozzie squinted at him. "Are you the guy?"
"What guy?"
"The guy Mom never talks about."
Ezio looked up at me.
For one second he wasn't the Don.
He was the man who had laughed into my neck at two in the morning and asked me to play it again.
Then it was gone.
He stood up.
"Nobody leaves this church until I say so."
He turned to his men.
"They come to my house. All three. Nobody puts a hand on them."
"Ezio," Gaspare said softly.
"Nobody, Zio. Not even you."
"We'll come," I said. "On one condition."
Ezio's eyes narrowed.
I turned back to the pews one more time.
"Everybody here saw my children's faces today," I said. "If anything happens to them, every one of you knows who did it."
Nobody laughed.
A few people nodded.
The bride nodded hardest.
Then I turned back toward the altar, and I saw him.
Front pew, two seats down from Gaspare.
Navy suit, gray crew cut, a white rose in his lapel.
The man who moved us twice and checked our locks every Christmas.
The man who taught Ozzie to ride a bike.
My marshal.
He looked right at me, and he lifted one finger to his lips.
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