He Protected My Baby's Killer, So I Left Him novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Elio's POV

Elio's POV

The bank on Westminster Street opened at eight, and I was on the step at seven-forty.

I had slept in my truck at the curb outside the green awning again, with one eye on the silver car down the block until it left at two.

The branch manager was a tired woman in a gray cardigan who had called me at home the evening before.

She laid the letter on her desk and turned it so I could read it.

It was on plain paper, and it said I authorized the bearer to enter box 114 on my behalf.

It carried my signature.

It was a good copy, with the downstroke I make on the E, and the little hook I put on the o.

"We've kept it," she said. "The man gave a name that wasn't yours, and he couldn't produce the key. When I asked for ID he said he'd come back with a lawyer."

"Thin glasses?"

"And very polite."

I knew where that signature had come from.

It was on the yard loan, the original, the one Dominic's father had drawn up when I was twenty-one.

Somebody had kept it in a file for twelve years.

She took me down to the vault herself.

I turned my key in the box and took out the envelope with the two copies of the voicemail on small silver drives.

I put one drive in my jacket with the old phone.

The other I kept in my hand.

I stood in the corridor outside the vault and made up my mind about something I should have decided a week ago.

For twelve years I had called this tape mine.

I had said I would choose the room, and the hour, and the people.

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