He Took His Childhood Friend Away, So I Came Back a Mafia Heiress novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Rinaldi Table
The long table in the back room on Ferry Street had not seated a full house in sixteen years.
On Saturday night it seated forty.
Both families came, the Rinaldi captains on the left and the Santoro drivers on the right, and at some point in the soup nobody noticed which side they were sitting on.
Pasquale ruled the middle with a wine glass and an opinion on everything.
"The veal is dry," he announced.
"The veal is perfect," said Rocco's mother, without looking up.
"I was eating veal in this room before you were married."
"And you've complained about it every night since."
The table roared.
I sat at the head, in my father's chair, with a plate of food I couldn't finish.
Rocco sat at my right hand, because I had put him there.
He looked ten years younger.
Every time I glanced at him, he was already looking at me.
"Stop that," I murmured.
"Stop what?"
"Looking."
"No," he said. "I'll look at you at breakfast. I'll look at you at the bank. I'll look at you at my own funeral."
"Rocco."
"I've decided."
The old driver across from us snorted into his napkin.
Aurelio stood to give the toast, with his glasses back on his nose and his split lip healed to a thin line.
"To the man who sat in that chair for twenty years," he said. "Who never ate dessert before a guest, and never left a debt unpaid, and who put the only key to his house around his daughter's neck."
He raised his glass toward me.
"To Gemma Rinaldi, who came home."
Forty glasses went up.
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