I Bought His Love, Then He Became the Don novel · Chapter 65 of 76
Chapter 65: The Night Before
The window went up.
The long car pulled off the gravel shoulder with its lights still off, and turned them on at the river road.
I stood at the gate until I couldn't hear it.
Behind me the yard light hummed on its pole.
The man from the waiting room picked the pipe up off the gravel and put it in his trunk without a word.
Then he and the cousins sat in their cars with the engines running, very carefully not looking at us.
Damiano was still at the crane boom.
He'd rolled his sleeve back down. He was buttoning the cuff with his left hand, badly.
I walked back across the gravel and did it for him.
"Don't," I said. "Don't ever do that to me again."
I finished the button.
"Next time you want to save me," I said, "wake me up first."
He gave a sound that was almost a laugh.
"That's fair."
"I know it's fair."
We drove home in the back of the man from the waiting room's car, on opposite sides of the seat.
Halfway up Halsted his hand came across the seat, palm up, and lay there.
I looked at it all the way to Taylor Street.
At the light by the church, I put mine in it.
Tuesday the whole street knew.
I don't know how. Nobody ever knows how on Taylor Street.
By noon the restaurant's phone had rung so many times the owner took it off the hook.
"Every table," the baker told me, setting down a coffee I hadn't ordered. "Thursday. Every single one."
"My sister-in-law's coming in from Berwyn. She hates me."
"It's not a show."
"Honey. It's the best show this street's had since the bride's dress."
The cook sent word that he'd make anything they wanted Thursday except veal.
Rita finished the boy's jacket on Wednesday afternoon.
She pressed it twice and hung it on the rack with a paper tag on the hanger, in her round handwriting. No name. Just THURSDAY.
At six she went up to her room and shut her door, and I heard it click, soft.
At nine on Wednesday night my father came up the walk of the brick house with a white bakery box and a deck of cards.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–32 of I Bought His Love, Then He Became the Don are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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