My Father's Test Turns Lovers Into Killers novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Man Who Shot

I stood at the bottom of the back stairs with flour on my hands and Paolo's gun pointed at my chest.

It was a different gun from the one in the cellar.

It was small and black, and it jumped in his fists.

"Paolo."

"Don't call me that like you're sorry for me."

His eyes were red and swollen.

He had not slept either.

"The man is on a bus to Pittsburgh," he said. "I gave him four hundred dollars. He told me his name at the station, and I told him mine."

"That's good."

"It isn't good. It's the first thing I've done in two years that wasn't an order."

The gun wavered and came back.

"I need you to say it, Allegra."

"Say what?"

"Look at me and say you didn't ask me to do it."

"I didn't ask you."

"Everybody says that." His voice shook. "Your uncle said it too. He said you'd cried for three nights and you couldn't say it out loud. He said you needed somebody to make it stop."

"I was fifteen."

"What?"

"I was fifteen years old, Paolo, and my uncle gave me the lines."

"I stood in that room last night and heard myself, and that's the first I knew what they were for."

Paolo's mouth moved.

"You were there?"

"I was on the bottom step."

"That was you on the tape?"

"That's what you heard in the dark two years ago. A recording of a child who thought she was in a play."

He swallowed, and I saw his whole throat work.

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