Kneel, Mafia Boss, Your Wife Is Gone novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Forty Men and a Page

The back room of the club on Passyunk was built for thirty men, and forty were jammed into it.

They stood along the walls under the framed photographs of dead Ferraros.

The underboss sat at the head of the long table, in Dominic's chair.

Dominic saw it and said nothing, because I had told him to say nothing.

Nico took the wall on my left, and Aurelio set a locked leather case on the table.

He opened it and lifted out the book of the house.

"Forty men," the underboss said, loud, to the room. "Forty men who swore on the seahorse. And we're here because a woman from Naples says she owns us."

"I say a page owns you," I said. "I'm only the one who can read."

I opened the book to the strip of black silk.

I turned it to face the room, and I read the last two lines out loud.

"While one drop of Sorrentino blood lives, every Ferraro man shall kneel to it when it asks. Or the house of Ferraro is struck from the earth."

Nobody breathed.

Then the room exploded.

Men shouted over each other, and a chair went over, and somebody swore at the ceiling.

The underboss let it run, and then he lifted one hand, and they went quiet for him.

That told me how long he had been doing it.

"A forgery," he said. "Look at it. A shaking scrawl, and a seal anyone can buy in Naples."

He pulled a folded paper from his jacket and slapped it flat beside the book.

"This is the old man's liquor license. Signed by his own hand, steady as a rock. Compare them."

Two captains bent over the table and looked from one page to the other.

I felt the room tilt toward him.

"His right hand was dead," Dominic said.

Every head turned.

He had stepped out from behind me, with his arm in its sling and his face gray under the lights.

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