The Don's Wife Stopped Asking novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Keys

When we came home that afternoon, the hall table had been cleared.

There was only a ring of keys on it, and a car fob, and a folded square of paper.

Tancredi picked them up and held them out to me on his flat hand.

"The front gate," he said. "The garden door, the side gate, the cellar, the garage. The Escalade is in your name as of this morning."

I looked at the keys.

I had waited three years to hold any one of them.

"The paper is a letter to the bank," he said. "Your name is on every account in this house now."

"Tancredi."

"I'm not asking you for anything." His voice was very even.

"Emilio is safe in a ward with two of the widows' sons outside his door. My uncle is in a cell on Richmond Terrace. The family is yours to walk away from, and so am I."

"You want me to go."

"No." He said it too quickly, and he heard it, and his jaw set.

"I want you to know that you can. If you walk out of that door tonight, no one will follow you."

The ring was still bright on his finger.

He stood with his hand held out like a man waiting to be turned down.

I understood then what he believed.

He thought the leash had been the only thing holding me.

He thought I had stayed for Emilio and for the book.

Now that I had both, he believed I would be gone by morning.

I took the keys.

They were heavier than I had expected.

I put them in the pocket of my coat.

Then I took the coat off and hung it on the hook by the door.

"I'll stay tonight," I said. "I'm telling you, not asking."

His face did not change.

His eyes did.

"Which room?" he said.

"Mine."

I walked up the stairs ahead of him.

The room I had slept in for three years was exactly as I had left it.

The key was still in the outside lock.

I went in, and I turned the key on the inside, and then I turned it back.

I left the door open.

Tancredi stood on the threshold.

He had never come into this room without a purpose.

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