The Mafia's Forbidden Captive novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Front Door

I came on the third night, at nine o'clock, in my own car.

I parked in the drive where the gravel crunched, and sat for a minute with the engine ticking.

The stone house above the river had every window lit.

I walked up the front steps and did not use the side door or the garden.

Nobody opened it for me.

I raised my hand and knocked, three times, hard enough to hurt my knuckles.

The door opened at once.

Luciano stood in the hall in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.

The strap was gone from his shoulder, and he held himself as if the wound were mostly a memory.

He had been standing on the other side of it.

I could see that from the way his chest moved.

"You knocked," he said.

"I said I would."

"It's open.

"It's always been open."

"I know," I said.

"I'm walking in anyway.

"Mine to walk through."

I crossed the threshold, and he closed the door behind me and left it unlatched.

The hall was warm and smelled of woodsmoke.

On the long table in the library, where I had once stitched him, a plain black book lay open under the lamp.

It was bound in cloth, with a ribbon.

He saw me look at it.

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