My Mafia Husband Fed Me Birth Control, So I Took His Throne novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Cooler

Carmine's driver parked in the alley behind Strozzi's, and two of my uncle's men stayed with the car.

"I need to bake," I had told him at breakfast. "If I sit in that house all day, I'll lose my mind."

"The baby needs you calm," he'd said, and sent me with an escort.

I walked into the back kitchen where I had made croissants every morning for two years.

The ovens were warm, and nobody was at the long steel counter but a small woman in a black cardigan.

Nonna did not say hello.

She pointed at the walk-in cooler.

"Four minutes," she said. "Your uncle's boys check the clock."

I put on my apron, set a tray of butter on the counter where it could be seen through the alley door, and went in.

The cooler was cold enough to see my breath.

Serena sat on an overturned crate with a ledger on her knees and her glasses pushed up into her curls.

Paolo stood behind her with his hand on her shoulder.

When I came in he took the hand away, then put it back.

"Don't," I said. "I know."

"I'm sorry about the table," Paolo said. "About Christmas. About all of it."

"Later. Friday first."

Serena held out the ledger, open to a page of small, neat numbers.

"I keep the books for four businesses," she said. "Two years ago a hauling company started billing us for cartage we never used. It's the same amount on the first of every month."

"Whose company?"

"A cousin of one of the capos. The one with the gold tooth."

I looked at the line of numbers.

"And the money comes from where?"

"A construction outfit that pays out of a Cardello account." Serena shut the book. "I didn't know what it was until Paolo showed me the phone."

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