Everyone Had a Key but Me novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: You Made Me Say It

I lay awake listening to him breathe on the other side of the wall.

The sofa creaked every time he turned.

His two men were in a car on the canal, and Dario had texted that Bruno was checked into a hotel across the city.

At midnight I gave up and went out in my socks.

Gabe was sitting on the sofa fully dressed, in the dark, with the pieces of the bracelet laid out on the cushion beside him.

He had taken them off the windowsill.

"Put those back," I said.

"I wasn't going to take them."

"You've been touching them."

"I wanted to see her face."

He turned the right half of the portrait toward the lamp.

My mother's mouth, and her chin, and one dark eye.

"I was five when she died," I said. "I don't remember her voice anymore. I remember that bracelet knocking against my cheek when she carried me upstairs."

He listened without moving.

"Every night at my grandmother's, I held it until I fell asleep. That's what you put on a table and bargained with."

"I know," he said. "I know what I did."

"I let Allegra wear it," he said. "I should have taken it off her wrist at the door."

"You made me say it."

My voice came out small, and I hated it.

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