Chapter 9: Zero Percent

The lab people came to the Morra house on Thursday morning.

Two of them, in matching navy polos, with a cooler and a clipboard and a van that said nothing on the side.

They drew my blood in the library, by the fire.

They drew Ludovica's from her thin old arm while she looked at the ceiling.

They drew Carlotta's last, in the hall, and she made a production of fainting.

Ruggero signed for all three vials himself.

"Ten days," he told the room. "Science takes its time."

Ten days was a long time to wait for a stranger in a navy polo to tell me who my mother was.

So I didn't wait.

The next Wednesday night I turned the closed sign at six and pushed the bakery tables together.

By seven the 1000 block of Taylor Street was in my shop.

All nine of us.

The florist, who'd held her lease for thirty-one years and cried at every christening on the block.

The butcher, who brought sausage again.

The shoe repair man, who sat in the corner fixing a heel because he couldn't sit with empty hands.

The deli sisters, who arrived together and took opposite ends of the table on purpose.

The tailor, the barber and the two brothers from the hardware store came.

The couple from the gelato place had only opened in May, and they looked like they wanted to throw up.

And me, with a twin in a sling and the other asleep in the double crib Teo built.

He'd finally been allowed upstairs to build it.

He had not been allowed to stay for dinner.

Benedetta brought out trays of focaccia and three bottles of red from somebody's cousin's basement.

"Two hundred twelve thousand," I said, and put my note on the table.

The butcher put his down. "A hundred eighty."

The tailor. "Ninety-four."

The deli sisters put down one note between them and immediately started fighting about it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Don's Secret Wife Was Mafia Royalty from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.