The Don's Secret Twins novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Back in Ten

At Ezio's house the twins meet their grandmother, the DNA is swabbed, and Ezio pulls out the note Marin left on his pillow eight years ago, until the jilted bride turns up at the gate.

The marshal lowered his finger and smiled at me.

Then Ezio's men closed around us, and I lost him in the crowd.

They walked us out the side door into the noon sun on Jackson Square.

The car was long and black and smelled like his cologne.

Ezio sat across from us with his back to the driver.

Coco pressed her whole face to the window.

Ozzie held his backpack on his knees and wrote in a little notebook.

"What are you writing?" Ezio asked.

"Rules," Ozzie said.

"For who?"

"You."

Ezio held out his hand.

Ozzie put the notebook in the front pocket and zipped it.

The streetcar tracks slid past on St. Charles.

"The man in the front pew," I said. "Navy suit. White rose."

Ezio didn't take his eyes off Ozzie.

"What about him?"

"He's the marshal who hid us for eight years. He stopped answering my calls on Friday."

Something in his face went very still.

Then it was gone.

"He's my uncle's guest."

"Your uncle's guest put his finger to his lips at me."

"You drove all night. You're seeing things."

"I'm seeing fine."

"You're paranoid, Marin."

Coco turned around from the window.

"She's not paranoid. She's careful. There's a difference."

Ezio looked at her.

"Who told you that?"

"She did. Like a million times."

The house was white, with black iron galleries and a courtyard behind a high wall.

His mother stood waiting on the front steps in a black dress.

She had left the cathedral before us.

She was small and gray-haired, with Ezio's straight nose.

She looked at the twins, and her hand went to her mouth.

Then she came down the steps and took Coco's face in both her hands.

"Madonna," she whispered. "His eyes. Both of them."

"Are you his mom?" Coco asked.

"I am."

"Do you have a dog?"

"No."

"Why not?"

His mother laughed, a short wet sound, and took the children by the hand.

"Come. Everybody is hungry after church."

She walked right past me.

She didn't say one word to me.

Coco interrogated the house for an hour.

How many bathrooms. Was the sword on the wall real. Who washed all the windows.

Why there was a piano nobody played.

She stopped in front of a photograph on the piano.

A gray-haired man at the keys, laughing over his shoulder.

"Who's that?"

Ezio stood behind her for a long moment.

"My father."

"Where is he?"

"He died."

"Oh." Coco studied the picture. "He looks nice."

Ezio walked out of the room.

At four o'clock a lab tech came to the door with a cardboard kit.

One of Ezio's men led her toward the dining room.

"Not in there," I said.

Ezio turned.

"Excuse me?"

"Not with your men in the room. In the kitchen. In front of your mother."

"Why my mother?"

"Because she wants them to be yours more than anyone," I said. "So she'll watch every tube. And if anybody switches one, she'll say so."

His mother looked at me for the first time.

"I will," she said.

The tech swabbed Ozzie first.

He opened his mouth wide and kept his eyes on Ezio the whole time.

Coco asked what the swab was made of, where it was going, and whether it tickled.

Ezio went last.

He sat at his mother's kitchen table and opened his mouth for a stranger in front of his own men.

The tech sealed the bag.

His mother wrote her initials across the tape in black pen.

Then Ezio said, "Courtyard," and walked out.

I followed him.

The fountain was dry, and banana leaves scraped against the brick wall.

He stopped by the fountain with his back to me.

"My uncle told me the next morning," he said. "The Barones paid the piano girl. She was there to keep me upstairs."

"Ezio."

"You kept me upstairs." He turned around. "And my father bled out on a garage floor."

"I did keep you upstairs."

His eyes flicked.

"Until three," I said. "Then I went down to P3 for my phone charger."

He didn't move.

"At 3:12 your uncle took a gun out of a car and shot your father twice beside the elevator. I ran. I drove to the FBI. By noon the marshals had me."

"You could have sent word."

"To who? The family of the man who did it?"

The banana leaves scraped.

"I never went back upstairs," I said. "I wanted to. Every single day."

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he took out his wallet.

From behind his license he pulled a square of hotel notepaper.

It had been folded so many times it was soft as cloth.

He held it out without a word.

My own handwriting, eight years younger.

Back in ten. Don't you dare check out.

"I didn't," he said. "I sat on that bed till my men came to tell me."

I couldn't breathe right.

He'd carried it.

Through the war, through the funeral, through eight years of hating me.

"Why keep it?"

"So I'd remember what a liar's handwriting looks like."

His voice cracked on the last word.

Before I could answer, the gate buzzer went off.

One of his men came around the corner fast.

"Boss. The gate."

Through the black iron bars stood a woman in a wedding dress.

Her lace train was gray with street dirt.

Her veil was gone, and her red lipstick wasn't.

She held a bottle of grappa by the neck.

"Open up, Severino," Fia Barone said. "I want the woman who ruined my wedding."

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