Chapter 13: No Papers

I read Silvio's note three times.

Then I put it in the bedside drawer, face down, and the ring went in after it.

I did not cry.

I put on Dominic's black shirt over the collar and walked barefoot to the study.

He stood at his desk with his back to me, holding a folded paper.

"Silvio's man left the box with the front desk at six," he said without turning. "I had the clerk checked. Nobody touched you."

"I slept through it."

"You slept." His voice dropped. "That's why I let you."

"What's the paper?"

He turned around.

He looked like he hadn't been to bed.

There was a cut across his knuckle that hadn't been there at midnight.

"A deed," he said. "Falcone Holdings bought Lark's building at eight this morning. The whole building, her unit and her neighbors."

"Why?"

"My lawyer put it in your name." He held it out. "Nobody can evict her, burn her out or sell her to a man like Silvio. You only have to sign."

I looked at the paper in his hand.

It was heavy cream stock with a blue binding strip.

It was the same kind of paper Ethan had put in front of me in our kitchen, with a pen laid across it.

"Sign here, Ari," I said. "It's for the deposit."

His jaw moved.

"This isn't that," he said.

"I know it isn't. You just told me what's in it." I kept my hands at my sides. "I'm still not signing it."

"Ariella."

"Rule two. No contracts, no papers, I can walk out any day. You agreed to it in the back of your car."

"This protects Lark."

"Then put it in Lark's name."

"She'd refuse it."

"She would," I said. "And she'd be right to."

He stood there with the deed between us.

I watched him want to argue.

Every argument he had ended with my name on a line.

He walked to the fireplace.

He said nothing. He bent and put the corner of the paper into the pilot flame.

The cream stock curled and went brown and caught.

He held it until the heat reached his fingers, then dropped it on the grate.

We both watched it burn black.

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Left Her Cheating Fiancé, Then Met the Mafia Boss Who Wanted Her from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.