The Mafia Heir's Revenge Baby novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Sunday Dinner

I walked into Pop's Sunday dinner at two o'clock with the custody papers under my arm.

Nobody had invited me.

The front door was open the way it always was on Sundays, and the gravy smell hit me on the stoop.

Six years, and my stomach still turned over at it.

Fourteen Corsaros looked up from the long table.

The aunts. The cousins. The kids, grown taller.

Pop at the head in his wheelchair.

Carmine at his right, with Lucia beside him in my old chair.

Gianni at the far end, alone, sleeves rolled.

He put down his fork.

"Juniper," Pop said. "Sit."

"I won't be long."

I walked the length of the table and laid the papers in front of him, between the bread and the oil.

"Your son is taking me to court tomorrow," I said. "For a child. In front of a judge who eats at his restaurant every Friday."

The aunts stopped chewing.

"Carmine," one of them said under her breath.

Pop didn't touch the papers.

He looked at Carmine.

"Is that true?"

"It's a formality, Pop. She stole my kid. I'm getting him back."

"In a courtroom."

"It's the fastest way."

Pop turned the first page over with one finger.

"Forty years," he said. "Forty years I've kept this family out of courtrooms. Your grandfather did it before me. We don't put family in front of a judge. We don't put anybody's child in front of a judge."

"She's not family."

"Then the boy isn't either," Pop said. "Pick one."

Carmine's mouth opened and shut.

Down the table, a cousin's teenage daughter put her phone face down, the better to watch.

"Tear it up," Pop said.

Carmine didn't move.

"Here, Carmine. At my table. Tear it up so your aunts can see."

Carmine looked at me.

I looked back.

He picked up the papers.

He tore them in half, then in quarters, his face dark red, and dropped the pieces in the bread basket.

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