She Left Her Cheating Fiancé, Then Met the Mafia Boss Who Wanted Her novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Bowling Alley

Dominic told me before the phone finished ringing.

It was Thursday evening, and I was in his bathroom with a toothbrush in my mouth.

He came to the door with the phone still lit in his hand.

"Silvio has Lark," he said.

I spat in the sink.

"Where?"

"He took her from the hospital lot at the end of her shift. Two of his men, a car." He held my eyes. "He called me himself. He wants you at the old Northway Lanes by eight. Alone."

"And you told me."

"The second I knew."

"All right."

I wiped my mouth and looked at myself in the mirror.

My face was white, and the collar stood out black against it.

"I'm going in the front door," I said.

"Ariella."

"I'm going in the front door, and you're going in beside me. Not behind me, not in front. Beside."

He was quiet.

"My men can take the building in ten minutes," he said. "He has six. It would be bloody."

"And Lark would be in the middle."

"Yes."

"Then no."

He drew a breath and let it out slowly.

"This is your call," he said. "Tell me what you want."

"I want to talk to him."

"He'll want something."

"He wants a room full of people on Friday." I turned around. "He wants me to walk in there next to you and be ashamed. I'll give him Friday. I'm not giving him Lark."

Dominic crossed the tile.

He reached out and straightened the ring at the front of the collar, so that it sat in the hollow of my throat.

"There," he said. "Now he'll see it."

The Northway Lanes had been closed for six years.

The sign over the door still said BOWL in red, with the O burned out.

Dominic's car stopped at the curb. His men stayed in the cars behind us, four of them, with the engines running.

We went in through the glass doors together.

Inside it was dark and smelled of old carpet.

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