The Don's Secret Twins novel · Chapter 29 of 32

Chapter 29: Verdict

We filed back in and sat in the same seats.

Barones on the left.

Severinos on the right.

I sat between Fia and Ezio's mother, because neither of them would let go of my hands.

The jury came in and didn't look at anybody.

That's supposed to be bad.

I'd read that somewhere at three in the morning in Dayton.

Gaspare stood when the judge told him to.

He buttoned his gray jacket.

The ash was gone from his forehead.

"On the charge of first-degree murder," the judge said, "how do you find?"

The foreman was a heavy woman in a church sweater.

She unfolded the paper and didn't need it.

"Guilty."

The room didn't explode.

It went silent.

Then, on the Barone side, Fia's father took off his hat and put it over his heart.

On the Severino side, the man with the cane crossed himself.

Ezio's mother let go of my hand and put her face in her palms.

She didn't make a sound.

Ezio, in the front row, didn't move at all.

The judge set sentencing for March.

The deputies took Gaspare by both arms.

They walked him out the main aisle, not the side door, because the side door was jammed with press.

He had to go past both families.

Past the Barones, who stood up one by one as he came level with their row.

Past the old Severino men, who didn't.

Past his nephew, who looked him in the face and said nothing.

The hallway outside was a wall of cameras.

The deputies stopped him for the elevator, right in front of me.

He turned his head.

His soft voice was still soft.

"You think you've won something, Marin."

Every microphone in the hallway swung toward us.

"I think your brother's grandchildren get his hotel," I said. "Every dollar. Every share."

The elevator dinged.

He looked at it.

For one second I watched him hear that sound.

Then they put him in it, and the doors closed on him.

Outside on the courthouse steps the marshal was being walked to a van in his orange jumpsuit.

The agent stopped the guards at the bottom step.

She read him the new charge herself, in front of every camera on Tulane Avenue.

Perjury.

He looked up the steps and saw me.

He opened his mouth.

I turned away before he could say my name.

Ezio's mother took the twins home with her for the night.

She didn't ask.

She just stood at the bakery door with her handbag on her arm and said, "They sleep with me. You go."

Fia was gone to her father's before I could argue.

"Don't break my couch," she said from the stairs.

So at nine o'clock it was just Ezio and me at the bottom of the bakery stairs.

← Chapter 28 · All chapters · Chapter 30 →

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