Bound by Honor novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Nonna's Kitchen

I woke before dawn in the room across from Dario's with my shoes still on.

The lock on the inside door was brass, and it had held.

I lay on top of the quilt and looked at the ceiling.

My mother's two hundred and ten thousand dollars were now thirty.

I did not regret it.

I regretted that my hands had shaken in front of Silvio.

At six I gave up, washed my face, and followed the smell of bread down four flights of stairs to the kitchen.

It was a long, warm room at garden level, with copper pots on hooks and a black iron stove the size of a car.

A tiny old woman in a flowered apron stood at the counter, rolling dough with a pin as long as her arm.

She had white hair pinned in a bun and a face like a dried apple, and she looked at me without stopping her hands.

"You are the Chicago girl," she said.

"I'm Bianca."

"I know your name. I want to know if you eat."

"I eat."

"Good. Sit."

She pointed the rolling pin at a stool, and I sat.

She was Dario's grandmother, Orazio's mother, seventy-nine years old, and everyone in the house called her Nonna.

By seven she had put a plate of eggs with peppers in front of me.

There was buttered bread, and coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in.

"My grandson came to my door at midnight," she said.

"He said, Nonna, feed the girl, she gave up everything for her stupid brother."

"He said she is too proud to cry about it."

"He said that?"

"He said it kinder. I am translating." She sat across from me with her own cup. "Was it a good brother?"

"He's a terrible brother."

"Then you paid for love. The best price."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Bound by Honor from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.