The Don's Secret Twins novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Bride

Fia Barone becomes an unexpected ally, Marin hands back Gaspare's gold crosses, and the will shows exactly why Gaspare wants the twins gone.

Ezio didn't open the gate.

I did.

Fia Barone walked in, dragging three feet of dirty lace behind her.

She looked at Ezio.

"Not you," she said. "Her."

Ezio looked at the bottle.

"Is that for drinking or for hitting?"

"I haven't decided."

She sat down on the courtyard steps in her wedding dress and held the bottle out to me.

I sat down next to her.

Ezio stood there for a second, then went inside.

Fia pulled the cork with her teeth and spat it into the dry fountain.

"I've been engaged to that man for four months," she said. "We've had dinner twice. He talked about shipping containers."

I drank.

The grappa tasted like gasoline and pears.

"I'm sorry about your wedding."

"I'm not." She took the bottle back. "I spent this morning in a dressing room at the cathedral throwing up. My father thought it was nerves."

"Was it?"

"It was a man I didn't love and four hundred people clapping for it."

She drank and wiped her lipstick off the bottle with her thumb.

"You know why I was marrying him?"

"Peace."

"Peace." She laughed. "Two years of war between his family and mine. Then his uncle came to my father with a plan. A wedding. The Severinos and the Barones under one roof, and nobody shoots anybody again."

"Gaspare made the match."

"Gaspare made the match. Gaspare picked the church. Gaspare picked the date."

She turned the bottle in her hands.

"In 2019 he picked a date for my brother, too."

I waited.

"A truce meeting in a parking lot in Metairie. Gaspare set the time. My brother went because he was the one who always went."

Her voice stayed flat.

"A man walked up to his windshield and shot him three times. Then he leaned in and said, 'Ezio says hello.'"

I looked at the kitchen window.

Ezio was standing in it, watching us.

"Do you believe that?" I asked.

"I believed it for seven years." She looked at me. "Then this morning a blonde in jeans walked up the aisle and said Gaspare shot his own brother. And he didn't even look surprised."

"So you believe me."

"I believe every time a Barone dies, Gaspare Severino picked the date."

She handed me the bottle.

"So yes."

Coco burst out the kitchen door with Ozzie behind her.

She stopped dead when she saw the dress.

"Are you a princess?"

"I'm a baker," Fia said.

"Why are you wearing that?"

"I was supposed to get married today. Your mom stopped it."

Coco turned around and looked at me with enormous eyes.

"Mom. That's so rude."

Fia laughed so hard she had to put the bottle down.

Then she got up, walked out to her car, and came back with her bouquet.

White roses, a little crushed.

She split it in two and gave half to each twin.

"There," she said. "Now somebody got married today."

Ozzie looked at his roses like they were a trick.

"Who?"

"Nobody. That's the best kind."

At seven the gate buzzed again.

This time it was Gaspare.

Ezio's mother let him in.

He came into the parlor in his gray suit with two small velvet boxes in his hand.

He went straight to the twins and got down on one knee.

"I'm your great-uncle," he said in that soft voice. "I've brought you each a present."

Two thin gold crosses on gold chains.

Coco reached for hers.

He hung it around her neck before I could cross the room.

His fingers brushed the back of her braid.

Then he fastened the other one on Ozzie.

Ezio watched from the fireplace with his arms folded.

His mother stood in the doorway.

I walked over and knelt beside my children.

I unhooked the chain from Coco's neck.

Then Ozzie's.

I laid both crosses in Gaspare's palm and closed his fingers over them.

"My kids don't take gold from strangers," I said.

Gaspare smiled at me.

"I'm family."

"Not to them."

The room went very quiet.

Ezio's mother looked from me to Gaspare and back again.

Gaspare stood up slowly, brushing off his knee.

"Of course," he said. "A mother is careful. I respect that."

He turned to Ezio's mother and kissed her cheek.

"They're beautiful," he told her. "You're tired. I'll go."

He put the crosses in his pocket and walked out.

Fia, in the hall in her dirty wedding dress, didn't step aside for him.

He had to walk around her.

At nine o'clock Ezio's lawyer came in with a sealed envelope.

He was gray and careful and he didn't look at me.

He opened the envelope at the dining table in front of Ezio, his mother, Fia and me.

"Ninety-nine point nine nine percent," he said. "Both children. They're yours."

Ezio's mother sat down hard in a chair and crossed herself.

Ezio didn't move.

He looked across the table at me, and something in his face had cracked open.

"Seven years," he said quietly. "You kept them from me for seven years."

"I kept them alive for seven years."

The lawyer cleared his throat.

"There's a second matter. Your father's will."

Ezio's eyes stayed on me.

"What about it?"

"The hotel and the port went to you. If you die without children of your blood, all of it passes to your uncle." The lawyer folded his hands. "Children of your blood cut him out completely. Every dollar. Every share."

Nobody said anything.

Fia set her bottle down very carefully on the table.

I looked at Ezio.

"Friday a man walked into their school and said he was their uncle," I said. "There's your reason."

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