I Locked Two Rival Mob Heirs In, So Neither Lets Me Go novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Key
The Truce Dinner came back on the first Friday of April, one year to the night.
The hotel ballroom had round tables this time, not head tables, and nobody had been told where to sit.
Higas and Rapozas ate together in a loud, happy tangle.
Dean's mother had Manny's mother by the arm.
The night shift from the plant had two tables by the windows, hairnets in their pockets.
My grandmother sat near the stage with her fan.
My mother sat next to her with a basket of sweet bread, and nobody was permitted to leave without a loaf.
Seiji Higa and Frank Rapoza were not there.
Their wives had sent them to wash the dishes in the kitchen of the Holy Ghost hall, and they had gone.
I wore the black banquet uniform and a captain's pin, and a flashlight in my pocket out of habit.
The master key ring hung from my belt.
I was not working the room.
I was only running it, which is different, and the manager had told me so twice.
Dean sat on my left in a black suit.
Manny sat on my right in his cream linen jacket with a red hibiscus behind his ear.
Under the tablecloth, Dean's hand rested on my knee, and Manny's rested on top of it.
"It's almost nine," Dean said, low.
"The hotel tests the generator at nine," I said.
"Do they?" Manny said.
"I told the manager to do it tonight, on purpose."
Dean looked at me sideways.
"You arranged a blackout," he said.
"I arranged a test," I said.
At nine the manager stood and tapped a glass, and the room went quiet, and he asked everyone to rise.
Dean got to his feet with a glass of sake.
Manny got to his feet with a glass of sake.
They turned to face each other across my chair, two big men in a hall of two hundred people, and they smiled.
"To the families," Dean said.
"To the show being over," said Manny.
The room laughed, and raised its glasses.
The lights went out in the middle of the toast.
Two hundred people stood in the black ballroom with their glasses in the air.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Locked Two Rival Mob Heirs In, So Neither Lets Me Go are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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