I Locked Two Rival Mob Heirs In, So Neither Lets Me Go novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Tie

Nobody in the soup kitchen moved.

Seiji's mouth opened and closed once.

Frank looked down at his half of my mother's sweet bread.

"Dear," Seiji said at last, very softly.

"Don't," I said.

Seiji looked past me at his son, and I felt Dean go still at my left shoulder.

"Monday," Dean said.

"Dean," Seiji said.

"Monday, Papa. At the wharf. You can tell me then how the scar was a good idea."

Manny said nothing at all.

He stepped around me, picked up the loaf off the flour sack and set it down in Frank's lap.

Then he turned his back on his father.

I took each of them by a wrist and walked them out through the stockpots.

Four hundred people watched the three of us cross the hall.

I kept my chin up the whole way.

I had the suite door open and the key card in my fist before either of them said a word.

Manny kicked the ottoman across the carpet.

It hit the wall under the window and spun.

"Thirty-one years," he said.

"I had my nose set by a stranger in a clinic in Honokaa, and nobody came, and I told everyone I fell off a horse."

Dean stood at the glass with his palm flat against it and his back to us.

"I thought my father was busy hating you," he said, very quietly.

"He sent a cousin to the hospital with a bag of oranges."

I shut the door and leaned on it.

I was so angry I could not see the bay.

I was angry for my mother's window and for the funeral.

I was angry for every soup course I had set in front of those two old men with steady hands.

"Jackets off," I said.

They both turned.

"Both of you. Now."

"Mari," Dean said, "we should talk."

"No," I said.

"Nobody talks until I say."

"We had an agreement," Manny said, and his voice cracked on a laugh.

"Neither of us touches you unless the other one is in the room."

"You broke it at the pasture," Dean said.

"She broke it first, at the gate," Manny said.

"And I'm breaking it again," I said.

"You're both in the room. Bed."

They went.

Dean took off his gray silk tie on the way, the one his father had picked for the festa.

He held it out to me without being asked.

I took it.

I put him on the left side of the bed with his back against the headboard.

I wound the tie around both his wrists and knotted it to the post.

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