He Loved Me in Secret, Until I Became Someone He Could Never Have novel · Chapter 26 of 32
Chapter 26: The Price
Nobody in the back room said anything for a long time.
The radiator ticked under the new window.
"Say it again," the Richmond widow said.
"I'm asking to be released from my seat," Dario said. "From the Venturi Family. From this table."
The Philadelphia boss put down his antacids.
"Nobody's asked that in seventy-one years."
"I know."
"The last man who walked away from a table," the Annapolis boss said, "walked into the harbor."
"That was a different table," the widow said. "This one has a Keeper."
She looked at me.
I stood at my father's right hand with my own hands folded in front of me, and I kept them there.
I wanted to say something.
I wanted to tell them about the stairwell and the burned hands and nineteen days of drywall.
I was the Keeper.
The Keeper takes no side.
I didn't say a word.
The widow saw all of it on my face anyway.
She turned back to Dario.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because my father used my name to threaten a Keeper," Dario said. "And I let him use it for two years while I paid the bill in secret. I don't want a seat at a table that let him do that. Including the seat I'm sitting in."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of He Loved Me in Secret, Until I Became Someone He Could Never Have are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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