Chapter 15: The Count

Renata's POV

The Don's study smelled of cigars and old paper.

Three ledgers lay open on his desk, the same brown covers I had known since I was fifteen.

My father's two men stood against the wall in their black suits.

They had driven the lead car for him on Friday, and today they looked like men who did not know why they had been called.

My father stood beside the desk with his hands behind his back.

Gianluca stood by the window and kept his eyes on me.

He had the look of a man who had spent the whole night reading something.

Whatever it was, he was not looking at me the way he had on the terrace.

It was the first time I felt the weight of being believed.

"Begin," the Don said to his accountant.

The accountant put on his glasses and turned a page.

"These are the books Mr. Ostuni sent in April," he said. "They show the restaurant's register, a week at a time, for three years."

"Show me the pencil," the Don said.

The accountant held the page under a lamp.

The pencil was faint, but it was there, in a small slanting hand along the edge of every column.

"Dad took twelve hundred for the car," the accountant read. "Dad took nine hundred for the tailor. Dad took two thousand and called it a repair."

"Don," my father said.

"I did not ask you," the Don said.

The accountant turned the page.

"Dad says the cook's wages came out of the cook," he read. "Dad says the crew doesn't need to know."

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