Sold to the Man Who Took Me, but I Hold His Life novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Pike
The banquet hall on the White Horse Pike had been a diner for forty years, and it still had the counter and the revolving pie case.
They had pushed the booths against the walls and set one long table in the middle of the floor, with a white cloth and water jugs and nine chairs.
Sal Carbone sat at the head of it in his black suit and his cardigan, with his cane hooked on the table edge.
The gentleman from Philadelphia sat at his right hand with the notebook.
Along the wall stood twenty men in dark coats, and none of them were ours.
I came in behind Kieran and the dancers.
I wore my camel coat over a plain gray dress, and no stage makeup.
I had put the strip of paper in the pocket, and the brass key beside it.
Declan came in last, alone, in his dark overcoat.
He did not look at me.
He took the chair on Sal's left, the one that had been set for him, and laid both hands flat on the cloth.
Augie was already seated halfway down the table.
He wore a new suit and a clean shave, and he smiled at the room like a man at his own wedding.
Beside him, in the tie and the combover, sat my father.
Frank did not look up.
"Sit," Sal said.
It was the first word he had spoken.
His voice was thin and dry and carried to the back wall.
The dancers took the chairs along the near side, all seven.
Kieran stood against the wall behind me with his arms folded and his jaw set.
I sat at the foot of the table, in the same place as the Starlite.
"This is a hard thing," Sal said. "I'll say it plain so no one is confused. A complaint has been brought. It says Declan Mallory has pressed the girls of the Boards, and pressed them quiet. I swore on my family's name that no man in my house would do it. I buried two for it. I will bury a third if it is so."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Sold to the Man Who Took Me, but I Hold His Life are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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