A Decade For Nothing novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: My Coat
The waiter set down two plates of sea bass and withdrew.
Neither of us touched them.
"What's the number?" I asked.
Gordon's eyebrows lifted a quarter of an inch.
"That's more like it."
"I want to hear it said."
"Two hundred thousand dollars," he said. "Wired the day you sign. Another fifty when you've been out of Ohio for six months."
I kept my face still.
My phone was against my ribs, in my inside pocket, and I could feel its small warmth.
"That's a lot of money for a man you think is a cheater," I said.
"It's a lot of money for a nuisance."
"Is that what I am?"
"You are an inconvenience," Gordon said, pleasantly. "You have been an inconvenience since the first night you came to my house with a bottle of wine you couldn't afford."
"You remember the wine."
"I remember everything, Levi. It's a habit."
He picked up his fork, and put it down again.
"My daughter is soft," he said. "She believes the last person who cried in front of her. It's a flaw. She'll recover. But I won't have her spend another year chasing you out of loyalty, and I won't have that child's name smeared on the internet by a nurse who won't sign a piece of paper."
"That child's name?"
"The baby's."
"You said that quickly," I said. "For a man who's only worried about a nuisance."
For a moment I saw it.
A flat, dark look, over before it started.
Then he smiled.
"Eat your fish," he said.
"Whose card was it?" I said.
"I beg your pardon?"
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