I Left My Husband Bleeding, and the Mob Boss Said Good novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Everything I Said in Arabic

Marwan's POV

She came into my office at ten past six on Tuesday with a covered dish in both hands and snow on her hair.

I had told the night guard I was expecting no one.

The warehouse floor below the glass was dark, forty feet of stacked cartons and lottery terminals.

My driver was outside in the Range Rover with the engine running.

Nahla shut my office door with her heel.

"Your housekeeper's kibbeh," she said. "I fixed it."

"It didn't need fixing."

"It needed salt."

She set the dish on my desk, on top of the Dix Avenue envelopes I'd been counting, and lifted the lid.

The room filled with cumin and cinnamon and hot lamb.

I hadn't eaten since six that morning.

I had been counting money and not seeing it, because I was thinking about her mouth.

"You came here alone," I said.

"I came here with a man who has been told to fall asleep," she said.

"He doesn't fall asleep."

"He was told by me," she said.

I looked at her.

Eleven days ago she had climbed into my car with blood on her sleeve and named her terms.

Now she stood in my office in a green wool coat with her cheeks red from the cold.

She pulled the cord on my blind, and the glass went dark.

I should say what I knew that first morning.

I knew the Sarafas would come for her.

I knew a Sarafa wife in my house was the best card I would ever hold.

Her father-in-law wanted my father's child back more than he wanted his own son's life.

And when my housekeeper put her thumbs into the seam of that woman's bra, I knew I should stop her.

I stood in the doorway and let it happen.

Eleven days later the card had flour in her hair and was laughing on my kitchen counter.

She took a piece of kibbeh in her fingers and held it to my mouth.

I ate it.

It was perfect.

"Tell me," she said.

"It's perfect."

"Now say it in Arabic."

"It's perfect," I said, in Arabic, and she looked pleased about something I didn't understand yet.

She put the lid back on and moved the dish to the cabinet.

Then she came around the desk, put her hands on my shoulders, and pushed me down into my father's chair.

"Nahla."

"You've been counting money since four," she said. "Your jaw's tight. Sit."

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