After My Four Childhood Friends Abandoned Me, I Inherited a Mafia Empire novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Against Orders
Ilario's POV
I woke at nine at night with her note under my hand.
She had written it on the back of a hospital menu, in the careful block capitals she uses when the words won't hold still.
Ilario. I have to go out tonight. It is a trap and I know it and I have a plan. Stay in this bed. That is an order. I'm sorry. I'll be back by midnight. M.
I read it three times.
The first time, I understood it.
The second time, I felt it close on me.
By the third, it had gone through my skull and down to the soles of my feet.
This was not her sleepy word at the bedroom door.
She had been awake and sure, and she had meant it with her whole mind.
I tried to sit up, and I could not do it.
I could breathe, and I could think.
My legs lay on the sheet, and my hands lay at my sides, and I could not lift either toward the door.
The monitor beeped over my head.
I thought of the old man in his bed with the knife wiped clean.
She will never spend you, he had said.
He had been right, and he had been wrong.
She hadn't spent me.
She had only asked, and I had no way to say no.
My phone lit up on the tray beside the bed.
I could reach it, because she hadn't said not to touch the phone.
It was the gray-haired captain with the cane.
"Ilario," he said. His voice was tight. "Where is she?"
"Not here. What's wrong?"
"She sent five of us to Prospect Street. We're to wait in the cars across from the old house until she calls out Pagano."
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