He Loved Me in Secret, Until I Became Someone He Could Never Have novel · Chapter 4 of 32
Chapter 4: The Vault
I slept in the apartment above the bank.
It had been my grandmother's, and nobody had lived in it since she died.
The radiator banged all night.
I didn't sleep much.
At seven, the three old tellers were waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs with a white pastry box.
"Cannoli," the tallest one said. "From next door. For courage."
"For the Ledger," said the one with the hearing aid.
"For the hips," said the one who did the crossword in pen.
She ate the first cannoli herself.
They walked me into the vault like a bride.
It was smaller than I remembered.
A steel door as thick as my arm, a table, a lamp, and shelves of gray tin boxes, one for every Family.
The Ledger sat on the table.
It was a leather book the size of a tombstone, with seventy-one years of handwriting inside.
"Your great-grandmother started it in pencil," the tallest teller said. "Your grandmother switched to ink. Your father used a fountain pen and blotted everything twice."
"He's a blotter," the crossword teller agreed.
They taught me the way they'd taught my father.
Every Family had a page.
Every page had a bond: the number they'd deposited as their promise of peace.
Under it went every movement in seventy-one years.
There were almost none.
That was the point.
A bond only moved if the boss and the Keeper both signed, and the Keeper only signed if the whole table agreed.
"In fifty years," the teller with the hearing aid said, "I've seen this book move four times. Two funerals, one flood, and the time the Philadelphia boss's wife made him."
Keep reading free with an account. Start He Loved Me in Secret, Until I Became Someone He Could Never Have from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.
← Chapter 3 · All chapters · Chapter 5 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend