This Time I Choose Mr. Mafia novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: Montrose

Damiano set the little phone down on the oak table, screen up, between my father's run of hearts and Bruna's discard pile.

"Twenty minutes," he said.

Bruna put her cards down.

"You're not going."

"I'm going." He looked at me. "So is she. We agreed."

"Agreed to what?" my father said. "Somebody tell me what's in Montrose."

"A man who wants me dead, sir," Damiano said. "And three men he hired in Cicero to do it."

"Then call the police."

"If a squad car drives up that road, he leaves and tries again next week. If he gets away tonight, he picks the next night, and I don't know which one it is."

My father turned to me.

"Dess. You're not going anywhere near that lake."

"He put my name on it, Dad," I said. "If Damiano walks in there alone, it's still my name."

My father looked at me for a long moment, the way he'd looked at me on the night I chose.

Then he looked at Damiano.

"Bring her back."

"Both of us, sir," Damiano said. "That's the deal."

Bruna gathered the cards and started to shuffle, hard.

"I'll stay with your father," she said. "Somebody has to keep cheating him."

At two minutes to midnight the gray car stopped at the end of the Montrose road with its lights off.

The harbor lay black and flat beyond the trees.

Masts ticked against each other in the wind.

The boathouse sat at the end of the lot, long and low, with one bulb over the door.

Lake water slapped under its pilings.

One of Damiano's men came out of the dark beside the car and leaned to the window.

"Three of them inside since eleven," he said. "And the blond one. Nobody else came up the road."

"Where are ours?"

"Two on the road. Four at the lake doors, in the water to their knees."

Damiano got out and came around and opened my door.

I wore black jeans, flat boots and a gray sweater, and his jacket around my shoulders.

He took my hand.

We walked up the gravel together, in the open, under the one bulb.

The door wasn't locked.

Inside it smelled of lake water and gasoline and old varnish.

Long racing shells hung on racks to the ceiling.

A flashlight snapped on in our faces.

"I said alone," Rhett's voice said.

"You sent it from my phone," I said. "So I came."

The flashlight dropped from my eyes.

Rhett stood twenty feet away between two racks, in a dark windbreaker, his hair flat with damp.

Behind him stood three men with guns, and none of them expected a woman.

"Odessa," Rhett said, and for once he sounded tired. "You weren't supposed to be here."

"Where was I supposed to be?"

"Home in bed. With your father in the next room." He almost smiled. "Asleep."

"And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow you'd be a widow," he said. "A widow whose own phone sent her husband to the lake at midnight."

"Your stepmother would sign a second petition," he said. "And this time nobody on Oakley Avenue would clap."

← Chapter 22 · All chapters · Chapter 24 →

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