Bitter Burn novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Collar
We read the book through twice that night, in the safe house, with the blinds down.
Sabine photographed every page.
She said it would hold in any court in the country.
The hand was Declan's, and the cipher was a hobby he had never hidden from his sister.
By two in the morning the apartment was quiet.
Bridie slept in the bedroom with the green ledger under her pillow.
Sabine had gone down to her car to make a call.
I sat at the kitchen table with my father's handwriting in front of me.
Finbar came and stood in the doorway.
He had not slept either.
He had the burn on his arm wrapped, and in the lamplight his grey eyes were wide and careful.
"I want to ask you for something," he said.
"I don't know if I have the right."
I looked at him and waited.
"Not as a way of fixing it.
"Because I miss it, and it is part of who I am.
"And I would like to wear it again as myself, and not as a thing that was done to me."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Bitter Burn are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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