I Hid a Mob Boss in the Stacks, So He Claimed My Nights novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Page

"He wants you to fail where fifty men can watch," Pia said from the front seat, with her hands tight on the wheel.

"That's what handing you the page means. So you won't."

She drove us back to Murray Hill Road with the heater on high and did not say another word.

That was Wednesday.

By the night of the twenty-third, Lucio had the deed by heart.

That was not the same as having it by eye, and he knew it.

Pia had printed her photograph of the draft on the library's color copier.

I had stood at the machine after close with the door locked.

Every evening he took the page to the kitchen table.

He matched what he had heard to the shapes in front of him, one word at a time.

On the twenty-third I found him in the bathroom at midnight with the water running.

It was the big bathroom at the end of the hall.

The clawfoot tub was one his mother had picked out the year Lucio was born.

He sat in it with the water to his chest and the printed page held above the surface.

His shirt lay on the floor.

"You're reading in the bath," I said from the door.

"It's the only room Pia doesn't walk into," Lucio said.

"Is she asleep?" I said.

"She is at her friend's. She says if she hears the deed one more time she will move to Columbus."

I took off my sweater and my jeans and the rest, and I stepped over the rim of the tub.

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