Exiled for Saying No, I Came Back and Took the Boss's Chair novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Snowed In at the Market
Ronan's POV
By four o'clock on the Wednesday the snow had buried the City Market to the axles.
The plows had given up at noon.
Lotta had kept the shop open all day anyway.
She had fed the half of the North End that could walk down the hill.
Every door got soup bones and bread and a sack of onions.
The old butchers had gone home at three, grumbling, with their collars up.
At dark I carried the last case of beef up the narrow stair to the loft above the cutting room, because she told me to.
It was a long low room under the roof beams, with a day bed and a wood stove.
A tall window looked down on the white square.
Her father had slept there on the nights before Easter.
She had lit the stove an hour ago, and the iron ticked and glowed.
I set the case down by the wall and stood there with snow melting off my shoulders.
Lotta sat on the rug in front of the stove in her father's old canvas apron.
Her boots were off, and her hands were out to the heat.
The firelight lay along her jaw.
I looked at her, and I did the thing I had been working up to since Christmas night.
"Stay in Kansas City," I said.
She did not turn her head.
"I'm not asking for the chair," I said. "If the Table goes to Santo in March, stay anyway."
I breathed.
"If they give you the chair, stay. I'm asking for me."
The stove ticked.
"I've watched you for four months," I said. "I've seen you take a corner of a coffin and tear a ticket and feed a street."
"I know what I've done," she said.
"A woman who can do that can live anywhere."
"I know," she said.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Exiled for Saying No, I Came Back and Took the Boss's Chair are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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