Page 55 of The Mad Don
He pulls me closer. “I saw you both. Stealing glances at each other.”
“Max was just worried about me.”
“You belong to me until the deal with Kirill is over.” His face is close to mine. “Do you understand?”
The tension sits between us, thick.
His phone rings, and he answers it without letting go of my jaw. He listens.
“Oh,” he says. “Oh. I understand.”
He lowers the phone and looks at me.
“My men at the party say the Doctor didn’t attend. He sent word he’d come down with a fever.” He sits back. “Let’s go home. I’ll find another time to give him the piece. Soon.”
I watch his fingers tap against his knee.
I think about what I saw. Fabiano, at the loading bay, walking the man into a car. The man who is supposedly home with a fever. The man Giovanni needs more than anyone alive.
He must not know that Fabiano was here. This wasn’t a plan between them to keep me out. At least, it didn’t look like it.
I weigh it for half a second.Do I want to interfere with his matters?
He doesn’t trust me, and he won’t believe me. But —
“I saw your Capo taking the man away,” I say.
He looks at me, irritated.
“I saw him,” I say. “At the back. Walking the Doctor to a car at the loading bay.”
“Fabiano is at the mansion.”
“He is most likely not. I just saw him. The brace, the leg, the way he moves. It was him. He had a hand on the man’s elbow, and he put him in a black car.”
Giovanni’s face changes.
“Stop the car,” he says to the driver. “Turn around. Back to the mansion.”
He looks at me.
“If you are lying,” he says, “I will have to punish you.”
I look out the window.
We drive back fast, and the city slides past. He does not speak again. His hand stays on his knee, and his fingers keep tapping.
The car pulls through the gates and up the drive. As soon as the car stops, he is out and reaches back in, taking my hand, pulling me out after him. We go up the steps together, and he pushes the front door open.
Fabiano opens it from the inside.
He is on his crutch. He is in house clothes. He looks like a man who has been home all evening.
“Don,” he says. “You’re back.”
Giovanni turns and looks at me.
I am staring at Fabiano.
