The Famous Mafioso Hired Me to Hear Him, and the Man in the Cell Is Not Who They Convicted novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Gate
It rained the morning they let him out, a thin cold April rain on the road in front of the lake prison.
I stood at the gate in my father's old raincoat and did not mind it.
A year had passed since the hearing, almost to the day.
It had been a year of depositions and a federal audit of a bakery, and of a trucking line whose six hundred drivers had finally been paid honestly.
Gianna Brancato had pleaded guilty to obstruction and fraud in October, in a courtroom I did not attend.
I did not look up her sentence.
Leona Tewksbury had testified for eleven days.
She lost her license for good, and the judge gave her probation, which she took standing with her hands at her sides.
At Christmas she sent me an envelope with no return address and no letter.
Inside, wrapped in tissue, was her bar pin, bent in the middle.
I put it on the shelf in my kitchen.
My license came back in July, with a letter of apology on the state seal.
My mother had her surgery in June, in Rochester, paid for by the club and my father's pension and a fund the Deaf community of three cities had started on its own.
Two days after, the audiologist turned on the implant, and my mother sat in the hospital bed with her eyes on my face.
"Mom," I said aloud.
"Can you hear me?"
She looked at my mouth.
Then she lifted her hands and signed, slowly, to prove it.
I HEAR A LOT OF NOISE.
IT IS TERRIBLE. DO NOT TALK SO LOUD.
I laughed until I cried.
Now I stood at the gate in the rain, and the guard in the booth was the heavy man with the gray mustache.
He picked up the phone and put it down.
He lifted two fingers at me, as he had in the corridor in January.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Famous Mafioso Hired Me to Hear Him, and the Man in the Cell Is Not Who They Convicted are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend