Sweet Temptation novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Gray Coat

They carried him down to the cellar, and he left a dark line on the stairs.

Vito took the children to the guest room, wrapped in blankets.

He sat down in the hall outside with a shotgun across his knees.

Sofia hummed all the way there.

Tommaso did not make a sound, and he did not let go of my sleeve until I made him.

"I want to see him," he said.

"No," said Cesare, from the cellar steps.

"He's the one."

Cesare stopped moving.

Blood had dried on his shirt cuff, and his voice was very careful.

"Tommaso. What did you hear?"

"He was humming. On the back stairs, before the door broke." The boy swallowed. "It was the same song. The night Mama went out, a man hummed it in the hall while he took her keys. I thought I dreamed that part."

"What song?"

Tommaso hummed four notes, flat and uncertain.

In the cellar, a man on a cot was humming the same four notes.

He had a tourniquet on his thigh, and he hummed to keep from screaming.

I heard it through the open door.

Cesare shut his eyes.

When he opened them, his son was still looking up at him.

For once the boy's face had nothing in it but need.

"You were right," Cesare said. "Every word. I'm sorry it took me three years to say it in the right voice."

Tommaso nodded once.

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