The Mob Boss Said My Father Owed Him a Life, So He Took Mine to Keep novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Dock

I got to the wheelhouse door before Rocco did and put my back against it.

"Don't," I said.

"Grace."

"He has six men on that dock, and you have a coat."

He looked down at me.

The color had come back into his face in hard patches, and under the overcoat I could feel how his whole body had changed.

He had been a grieving man at the chart table.

He was something else now, and it was quiet and very calm.

"I'm going to walk down that gangway," he said.

"You're going to stay here with the books and bolt this door."

"No."

"Yes," he said.

"If he gets the books, he burns them, and your father's name goes into the Bay with the paper.

"I need him looking at me and not at this boat."

"Then take the green notebook," I said.

"It's the smallest.

"It's the one he'd want."

He stopped.

I opened the oilcloth and took the notebook with its rubber band and pushed it flat inside the back of my fleece, against my spine.

I laid the two ledgers in the red locker under the three orange rings and dropped the lid, and I spun the dial.

"They're in the boat," I said.

"Say so."

He stared at me for a moment.

Then something that was almost a laugh went across his face and was gone.

"You'd have made a good bookkeeper," he said.

"Don't get used to it."

I unbolted the door.

Rocco went down the iron stair ahead of me, with the overcoat open and his hands empty and visible at his sides.

I followed one step behind.

He stopped at the top of the gangway.

Below us on the dock three black cars stood in a line with their headlights on.

Vincent stood in front of the middle one in his charcoal overcoat, with his hands in his pockets and his silver hair lit white from behind.

I counted the men.

There were six, spread out along the ramp and the pilings, and the thick-necked man stood nearest the foot of the gangway.

He had the pleased look on his face again.

"Rocco," Vincent said, warmly.

"There you are.

"I called the house and they told me you'd gone out with the girl.

"I was worried."

"You were worried," Rocco said.

"It's a dangerous city."

Rocco came down the gangway slowly, one step at a time.

I came down behind him, and he put his arm out sideways without looking, and I stopped on the third step from the bottom.

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