Chapter 4: Safehouse

Domenico's house was a plain brick row house in Newark, with a locksmith's shop on one side and a closed bakery on the other.

It had no gate and no dog.

Inside, the kitchen smelled of coffee and floor wax, and a bare bulb hung over a table with three mismatched chairs.

"This is the house the Santangelo boss sleeps in?" I said.

"Only when somebody's looking for him." He set a first aid tin on the table and stepped back to the sink. "Sit."

I sat.

The cut across my left palm had stopped bleeding in the car and started again as soon as I flexed it.

I washed it under the tap and wrapped a clean towel around it.

My hand shook.

I hadn't noticed how cold I was until warm water touched it.

"I can't tie this one-handed," I said.

Domenico had his back to me, filling the kettle.

"I'm not allowed to help you."

"I know the rule. I asked for it."

"Then you know I can't touch you."

"Tying a knot isn't touching."

He turned around slowly.

"That's the loosest reading of the law I've ever heard."

"I wrote the law," I said. "I can read it however I like."

He crossed the kitchen, and pulled up the third chair, and sat down facing me with the tin between us.

He did not look at my face.

He took the bandage out of the tin and wound it around my palm in four neat turns, his fingers dry and warm on the heel of my hand.

He tied it off in a flat knot.

Then he let go at once and put both hands on his knees.

"There," he said. "That's the whole of it."

"Thank you."

He nodded and stood and went back to the kettle.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Replaced His Wife and Lost His Mafia Empire from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.