Sold to the Man Who Took Me, but I Hold His Life novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Chair
He had the paper in the sink by seven the next morning.
I came down the stairs and found the kitchen full of gray light and the smell of a match.
Declan stood at the sink with his back to me, in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled.
Frank's page lay flat in the steel basin, the one-page marker with my father's signature at the bottom and Declan's blue ink beside it.
He had torn the bottom strip off, across the line I had written on the night in the office.
*Paid in full by Rosalind Dunleavy, in whatever it costs him.*
He turned and held the strip out to me, at arm's length, on his open palm.
"That's yours," he said. "You can frame it or burn it."
I took it.
My hand shook once and stopped.
"I'm going to burn the rest in front of you," Declan said. "I should have done it the day I read it."
"The day you read what?"
"My own name. Under the one place you'd have had to look." He struck a second match. "It's a paper that says you belong in this house. It doesn't. Nobody in this house is owned."
He held the flame to the corner of the page.
It caught slowly, brown and then orange, and the signature curled and went black.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Sold to the Man Who Took Me, but I Hold His Life are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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