He Replaced His Wife and Lost His Mafia Empire novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Foreman's Widow

Domenico's POV

I woke at six with a hole in my shoulder and Cara asleep on my good arm.

She slept with her fist under her chin and the bandage on her palm turned up.

I lay there a full minute without moving.

Then I slid my arm out from under her, an inch at a time, and left her the pillow.

I had said the cruelest thing I knew in the middle of the best night of my life.

She had not thrown me out, and I did not understand why.

I dressed one-handed in the dark and left a note on the chair that said where I was going.

Rule one was that she could leave when she liked, and I meant to keep it.

I took one man and a car and drove across the river to Bayonne.

The foreman's widow lived on the third floor of a yellow house with a plastic Madonna on the porch.

She opened the door on the chain, and she knew who I was.

"I told the other man everything," she said.

"What other man?"

She hesitated.

"The one from your side. Last year. Asking about Warehouse Nine."

I had sent nobody to ask about Warehouse Nine.

I stood in her hallway with my arm in a sling under my coat and made my face stay calm.

"Tell me again," I said. "Please. I'd like to hear it from you."

She let the chain off.

Her kitchen was clean, with a calendar from a funeral home on the wall.

She made coffee that I did not want and sat across from me with her hands folded.

"My husband wasn't a bad man," she said. "He drank. He owed money. When the Greco office offered him sixty thousand to leave a door unlocked at night, he said it was only a door."

← Chapter 8 · All chapters · Chapter 10 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend