The Mob Boss Said My Father Owed Him a Life, So He Took Mine to Keep novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: Put Out
I read the first page standing at the head of the table with forty people not breathing.
"March, five years ago," I said.
"Ferrante Parking, receipts, forty-one thousand.
"Deposited, thirty-one.
"Difference, ten thousand.
"Initial, V."
Nobody moved.
I turned the page and read the next one, and the next.
I read the numbers in a clear, flat voice, the way I read the tide table to the passengers on the late boat.
April.
June.
August, with the Christmas surge, nineteen thousand.
I read every month for three years, and every line ended with the same letter.
By the second page, the old men had stopped looking at their hands.
By the fourth, one of the wives had begun to cry quietly, without a sound.
The uncle with the white mustache leaned forward on his elbows, and his face was a color I had not seen on a living man.
"Parking," he said.
It was the first thing anyone had said.
"Parking," said another, down the table.
"That's his.
"That's Vincenzo's company."
"The books are forged," Vincent said.
He had not stood.
His voice was still warm, but it had slowed, as if he were picking his way across ice.
"A bookkeeper who ran from the family can write what he likes in a dead language.
"The girl can read any number she wants into it."
"It is not a dead language," a voice said from the doorway.
It was thin and high and shaking.
"It's mine."
Every head turned.
My father stood in the door in his good jacket with his glasses crooked, and he had to put one hand on the frame to stay upright.
"It's my hand," he said.
"I wrote it.
"I kept your books for twenty-two years, Don Salvatore's and then Rocco's.
"I never took a dollar.
"I counted your dishwashers' tips, so the cooks wouldn't be cheated.
"Every one of you ate my work at this table."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Mob Boss Said My Father Owed Him a Life, So He Took Mine to Keep are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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