Don Bowed To Me Chapter 04
“Hazel! You don’t come home for ten years, and the moment you show up, you start picking fights?”
“If I’d known you’d turn out this ungrateful, I should have left you on the church steps in a basket the night you were born!”
Exactly like ten years ago.
The day my mother saw my SAT score report.
The mug flew straight at my forehead.
Blood ran down the side of my face and dripped onto the hardwood.
She’d worn the same expression then.
“The one thing I regret in this life is not leaving you at the church that night. Would’ve spared this Family the embarrassment.”
Ten years was long enough to give up on whatever thin sliver of a mother’s love I’d once hoped for.
Right now, I didn’t feel a thing. Just numb.
My father tried to smooth things over.
“You know how your mother is. She says things she doesn’t mean.”
He forced a laugh and changed the subject.
“Isabella, tomorrow we’ll bring the Providence construction contract to the wedding. A gift from the Vitales to the Marchetti operation. Don Salvatore will remember it.”
Isabella’s smile went tight at the corners.
“Dad… Don Salvatore might not be at the wedding.”
“What?”
My father froze. “What? It’s Matteo’s wedding. Don Salvatore isn’t even coming to his own grandson’s wedding?”
Isabella sighed.
“Matteo said Don Salvatore has an important guest coming in this weekend. He has to be there in person, so he can’t make the wedding.”
Elliot frowned. “Who? Who’s more important than his own grandson at the altar?”
“I don’t know exactly.” Isabella shook her head.
“Matteo just said someone from up the coast. Don Salvatore has been working every angle he has for three months to get this meeting on the calendar.”
“Don Salvatore said if the deal closes, the Marchettis don’t have to worry about the Feds for a decade.”
Melanie looked genuinely baffled.
“Who makes a Marchetti wait three months?”
Isabella paused, then, with studied casualness, glanced at me.
“Hazel, you’ve been out there a while. Ever heard anything about who this might be?”
I shook my head.
“Not really.”
Elliot let out a short, derisive laugh.
“She never even made it through college. What the hell would she know?”
I kept eating and said nothing.
What was I supposed to say?
That the person Don Salvatore had been chasing for three months was me?
They’d think I was insane.