The Don's Secret Twins novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: Level P3

He drove me himself.

No driver, just two men in the back seat who were older than my mother would have been.

One had a cane with a silver head.

The other had a face and smoked with the window down.

"They worked for my father," Ezio said. "Thirty years. If you're lying, they'll know."

"And if I'm not?"

"They'll know that too."

The Hotel Severino took up most of a block on Canal Street.

Gold letters over the doors, a doorman in a burgundy coat.

Ezio drove past the front and down the ramp at the side.

The barrier went up for his car without anybody touching it.

P1. P2.

My hands started to sweat on my jeans.

P3.

It smelled the same.

Wet concrete, oil, the cold breath from the river under everything.

The same flickering tube light over the staff elevator.

Ezio parked and turned off the engine.

Nobody got out.

"Whenever you're ready," he said.

I wasn't.

I got out anyway.

The men got out behind me, slow, the cane tapping.

I walked to the far corner, behind the third pillar from the wall.

"My car was here," I said. "A blue Corolla with a bad muffler. The staff spots were back here, by the dumpsters."

The man with the cane nodded once.

"They still are."

"I came down at three. My phone was dead, and the charger was in the glovebox. I wanted to text my friend that I wasn't coming home."

I didn't look at Ezio.

"I was sitting in the driver's seat with the door open when the elevator dinged."

I pointed at the staff elevator.

"Gaspare came out first. Gray coat, no hat. He walked over there."

I pointed at the reserved spaces along the wall.

"Your car was in the first space. Black Mercedes. A rosary hanging from the mirror."

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