My Ex's Father Is the Mafia King I Am Court-Ordered to Evaluate, and I Am the Reason He Is in the Cell novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Past the Gravel

Kostas's POV

My son came at six, in a cab, and he got out of it like a man stepping off a ship.

I watched him from the porch.

The supervisor had made his five o'clock round and gone, and he would not be back until nine.

Fay was in the bedroom with the door shut, asleep, or pretending to be.

She had come in from the dock gray with cold and said nothing.

She had lain down on the quilt in her clothes.

I had put a blanket over her and sat a while on the floor with my back against the wall.

She did not speak, and I did not ask her to.

The cab left.

Niko stood on the gravel in his good coat with his hands in his pockets, thin, in the last of the light.

I had not seen him on his feet in the open air for a year.

He was my height almost, and he held himself like his mother, with his chin lifted so that no one would see he was afraid.

"Papa," he said.

"Niko," I said.

I came down the porch steps.

It was nothing.

It was four wooden steps.

I put my foot on the bottom one, and then on the gravel, and the black strap above my ankle gave a short, warning chirp.

I did not stop.

The rule said I could not set foot on the gravel.

I had kept it since the day I came home, without being asked twice.

I walked across the gravel to my son with the thing beeping at my heel, and I put both arms around him.

He was cold, and all bone.

He smelled of church, of incense and wax, and under it of wine.

He stood stiff in my arms for a long moment.

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