I Woke Up at the Altar and Said No to the Mob Heir Who Let Me Die, but He Remembers Too novel · Chapter 18 of 40

Chapter 18: Unspooled

I didn't touch it again.

I sat on the step with the pumpkin between my feet, and I called him.

His car came back around the corner before the second ring ended.

He got out and looked at it.

He didn't crouch. He didn't touch it either.

"Inside," he said. "Please."

We stood in the dark shop with the blinds down and the pumpkin on the cutting table.

He pulled out a handful of the ribbon with a pen and held it under the lamp.

"It's not yours," he said. "It's a blank. Cheap. Drugstore."

"I know it's not mine."

"Where's yours?"

"Safe."

He nodded and didn't ask.

"He's fishing," he said. "He wants you to run to wherever you hid it, and he wants to watch you do it."

"So I don't run."

"So you let me move you." He put the pen down. "Tonight. Both of you. There's a house in Hingham nobody knows I own. I'll stay away. You'd never see me."

"No."

"Orla..."

"No." I was shaking and I hated it. "I've got a job. I've got a bride coming in on Tuesday for her mother's alterations. Nessa's got the dinosaur boy and a teacher who knows how to wipe. I'm not getting put in a house. I've been put in a house."

He was quiet.

"Then let me put one man on the street," he said. "Outside. Day and night. He doesn't come in. He doesn't talk to you."

"Is that a question?"

"It's a question."

I thought about the pumpkin's smile.

I thought about Nessa asleep upstairs in a felt lighthouse.

"One man," I said.

"Thank you."

He left at midnight.

I lay awake beside Nessa until the radiator banged at four.

In the morning there was a man in a navy peacoat on the bench at the bus stop across the avenue.

He was there at noon. He was there at six.

I told Una everything I could, that night, with the shop door locked.

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