The Don's Daughter He Left to Bleed novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Her Robe

I went home on Monday with my brother and four men, because I wanted my mother's rosary.

It was the only thing in that penthouse that was mine.

I had hidden it in a hollow book on the closet shelf seven years ago, behind a row of Gabriel's awards.

Franco drove.

He kept looking at me in the mirror.

"I can go up alone," I said.

"No."

"It's my apartment."

"It's your husband's apartment," Franco said. "You live in a place where you got shot and nobody checked on you."

I had no answer to that.

The doorman held the lobby door and smiled at me out of habit.

Then he saw the four men behind me, and the smile went out of his face.

"Mrs. Falco," he said. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. I'm just getting some things."

"Mr. Falco said you were still in the hospital." He looked at his hands. "And Miss Baxendale said she'd be staying a while, so she's been bringing up her bags."

"Her bags," I said.

"Since Saturday night."

Upstairs, I turned my key in the lock, and the door was already open an inch.

I pushed it with two fingers.

The apartment smelled like coffee and somebody else's perfume.

Brooke was standing in my kitchen with her back to me, and she was wearing my robe.

It was the cream silk one I had bought myself for our fifth anniversary.

She was pouring coffee into my favorite mug, the blue one with a chip on the handle.

Her sling lay on the counter.

"Gabe?" she called, without turning. "You're back early."

"No," I said.

She turned.

The coffee went over her wrist, and she hissed and dropped the mug on the tile.

It broke in three pieces.

"Nina," she said. "Oh my God. You're out of the hospital."

"Apparently."

"I thought you'd be there for days." She pulled the robe closed at her throat. "This isn't what it looks like. Gabe asked me to stay because the press is outside and I was scared to go home after the shooting. It's a guest thing."

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