I Got Pregnant by My Boss, the Mob Heir, So He Put a Ring on It novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Ice
In January the lake froze all the way out to the horizon.
The red sauna sat on its black rock with a path of trampled snow leading down to a hole cut in the ice.
I stood at the top of that path at six in the evening in a towel and my boots.
The stars were out, and it was nine below.
I was nearly five months pregnant.
My stomach stood out round and hard under the terry cloth, and the baby had started to flutter since New Year's.
Aune stood beside me in her own towel with her gray braid down her back.
She was fifty-four, with forearms that could lift a full water bucket in each hand.
She had taught me in two weeks to judge the heat of the stones by the sound of water on them.
"Today," she said in Finnish, "we do the old thing."
"What old thing?"
"You will see.
"Go in.
"I will bring him."
The inside of the smoke sauna was black and glossy and so hot the air felt liquid.
I climbed to the upper bench and sat with my back against the warm wall.
Salvatore lived now in a small apartment above a bakery in the old part of town.
The house on Skyline Parkway had gone to the county for a children's hospice.
He had written me one letter, and I kept it unopened in the glovebox of truck 6.
The six old men had come to the tow shed in the second week of December with a box of cannoli.
They told Gio the family would be run by the six of them in turn, and that he would never be asked to join.
He had said thank you.
I had watched him say it from the office door, with powdered sugar on his fingers.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Got Pregnant by My Boss, the Mob Heir, So He Put a Ring on It are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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