Kneel, Mafia Boss, Your Wife Is Gone novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: What My Father Took

The shouting stopped when the door shut behind the underboss.

Nobody at the table looked at me.

They looked at Dominic, who was still on one knee on his mother's carpet.

"Everybody out," Rosaria said. "Soup's cold. Come back Thursday."

They left quietly, with their wives, and the gray captain took the underboss down to the cellar of the club himself.

Rosaria put her coat on.

She looked at me and at her son, and her mouth did something I'd have been embarrassed by at twenty-two.

"I'm going to my sister's," she said. "Don't break the good plates."

The front door closed behind her.

Dominic got up off the floor, slowly.

"Upstairs," I said.

He followed me up to the bedroom, and I shut the door and stood with my back against it.

"Ask me," I said.

"Ila."

"Ask. He told you to. Ask me what my father took from yours."

He stood by the bed with his hand on the post.

"What did your father take from mine?"

"His house."

He didn't blink.

"Six years ago, your father had nothing left. The Calabrese burned the warehouse and killed his brothers. He was dying. He had a son he wanted to keep alive, and no way to do it."

"I know that part."

"Your father signed, because it was that or bury you."

I took a breath.

"Aurelio told me the rest in the vault, the night after you read it. He wept while he signed. And a week later, on his deathbed, he told Aurelio my father was a thief who had bought a dying man's house for the price of a ship."

Dominic closed his eyes.

"He told your underboss the same thing," I said. "He said it more than once. That's what that man told himself for six years. He believed your father had been robbed, and he believed killing mine would give you back what was yours."

"He believed that," Dominic said, "and he killed your mother."

"Yes."

"And you've known all this since Naples."

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you'd just read the page," I said. "Because you were standing in my father's vault with your world coming down, and I thought, he can have one night of believing his father was a good man."

← Chapter 18 · All chapters · Chapter 20 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend