The Don's Wife Died With His Secret Heir novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Green Dress

A secret doctor confirms the baby, and Nadia tells her the boy will be named heir this month. She slips her guard.

On Monday morning Nadia moved into the east wing, and four men carried her boxes past my door.

I stood in the hall with my arms folded and let them see me watch.

She had brought thirty boxes for a woman who had supposedly been a secret.

On Tuesday I asked for the car.

Santo's rule was two guards and a driver, and I said I wanted to see the bakery my father had left me.

Ottavio approved it in the kitchen, with a cup of coffee in his hand and a smile.

"Of course she should go," he said to the guard. "She's been shut up too long. Stay close, and be polite."

He kissed my cheek.

His left ear brushed my face, and I felt the old scar there.

It was a fold of skin at the top, from the knife in nineteen ninety-eight.

I thanked him, and I meant it, and I hated that I did.

The bakery on Atwells Avenue still smelled of anise and burnt sugar.

In the back office a doctor was waiting, a woman Mauro had found.

She took my blood pressure and my history in a low voice.

She checked my belly with a cold wand and turned the screen so I could see.

"Nine weeks," she said. "A strong heartbeat. Everything is where it should be."

I looked at the small flicker on the screen for a long time.

"Does anyone else know?" the doctor asked.

"No."

"Do you want your husband told?"

"No."

She wrote the date on the printout, folded it small and gave it to me.

I put it in my bra, and nobody searched me, because nobody had ever thought they needed to.

On Wednesday Nadia found me on the terrace.

She wore the green dress again, though it was not the weather for it.

The boy was beside her on the stones with a wooden train.

She waited until the guard stepped inside for his phone.

"You don't have to be cruel to me," Nadia said. "I didn't plan any of it."

"You moved in thirty boxes."

"I moved in what a child needs."

The boy ran his train along the flagstones and did not look up.

"Say what you came to say," I said.

Nadia smoothed her skirt.

"Ottavio says Santo will name him heir before the end of the month. At a ceremony here, with all the families."

"Ottavio says."

"He's been so kind to us. He's the only one who ever was."

She lifted her eyes to me, and there was nothing practiced in them for once.

"If you stay, you'll be standing next to that every Sunday for the rest of your life. I'm telling you because I wouldn't want it."

"Is that kindness, or a threat?"

"I don't know," Nadia said. "I honestly don't."

The boy dropped his train and held up his arms.

Ottavio had come out through the glass doors without a sound.

He picked the child up with one hand under him, easily, the way he always did.

"Uncle Otto," the boy said, and put his small hand over Ottavio's ear.

"That's my bad ear, little man," Ottavio said, and tickled him until he squealed.

Then he turned to me, still smiling.

"Alessia. Santo wants everyone at dinner Thursday night. Will you wear the blue?"

"I'd like to visit my mother's grave first," I said.

It was the first lie I had ever told him, and it came out easily.

"Thursday is her birthday."

Ottavio's face softened at once.

"Of course," he said. "Two men will go with you. Take as long as you like."

He touched my shoulder and carried the boy inside, and the boy laughed over his shoulder the whole way.

I stood on the terrace until my hands stopped shaking.

On Wednesday night I lay on my back in the dark and counted my own breathing.

On Thursday I did not wear the blue.

I wore my old gray coat.

I put my mother's rosary in the pocket, black beads and a silver cross worn smooth.

The cemetery sat on the cliff road above the bay.

The guards parked at the gate and let me walk in alone.

A daughter at her mother's grave was private, and neither of them wanted to stand too close.

My mother's stone was at the back, near a service road.

I put my hand flat on the cold granite.

"I'm sorry," I told her. "I'm going to be gone for a long time."

A black Mercedes sat at the end of the service road with its engine running and its driver's door open.

Mauro had left it there before dawn, and the key was in it, as he had promised.

I looked back once.

The two guards were at the gate, lighting cigarettes with their backs to the stones.

I got in, and I drove.

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