After My Four Childhood Friends Abandoned Me, I Inherited a Mafia Empire novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Seventeen of Seventeen
The lawyer came to the club at one in the morning in his overcoat, with the gray folder under his arm.
"The will says the Mass," he told me, in the counting room. "But it also says the roll is binding whenever every captain is present and willing to sign."
"Every captain?"
"All seventeen."
"Then we're short one," I said. "His chair is on the floor of a stone kitchen."
"I wouldn't be so sure," the lawyer said, and opened the door.
The long table was set for the vote, with the seventeen chairs in a half circle and a pen beside each paper.
Sixteen men sat in them.
Behind them, in the dark corner by the coat rack, stood Ettore's father in his overcoat, with his hat in both hands.
He had not combed his hair, and he had not cried yet.
He crossed the room slowly and sat in his chair at the end.
"I was Ottavio's captain for thirty years," he said. "I'll sign, and then I'll go."
Nobody spoke.
The lawyer read the question.
It was only one sentence, and he read it in his thin voice.
"Shall Marta Lucchesi hold the family, the club, the port and the house, as her grandfather willed?"
The gray-haired captain with the cane said, "Yes," and signed.
The man with the gold watch said, "Yes, and I'm sorry," and signed.
The man with the restaurant said it, and the three who had owed Ettore said it one after another without lifting their heads.
The nine who had walked out behind Ettore on the first day signed in a line, and the oldest of them kissed the paper before he laid it down.
The last paper was the old captain's.
He signed it with a hand that shook so badly the lawyer had to hold the page.
"Seventeen of seventeen," the lawyer said, when the last pen was down.
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