The Mob Boss Said My Father Owed Him a Life, So He Took Mine to Keep novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Cottage
The car at the end of the path was the housekeeper's nephew, come to bring a sack of potatoes and a sheet of weather.
Rocco stood in the doorway with his hand inside his coat until the boy had dropped the sack on the step and driven off.
Then he stood a while longer and watched the lane.
"The boats are canceled," the housekeeper called, from the hedge.
"There's a gale coming up from Hatteras.
"Nothing sails before morning, and maybe not then."
Rocco came back in and shut the door.
"Then we stay," he said.
"If the boats can't sail, neither can the man in the gray car.
"Whatever he does, he does it tomorrow."
My father had gone gray with relief and weariness.
He ate a bowl of the housekeeper's soup standing up, and a second sitting down.
At eight o'clock he put on his old pajamas and lay down on the patchwork bed in the corner.
He was asleep before I'd finished clearing the table.
He slept with his glasses still on and his mouth open.
I took them off him, folded them, and put them on the sill.
"There's the loft," Rocco said, quietly.
"It has a mattress.
"I can sleep on the floor by the stove, and you can..."
"Rocco," I said.
He stopped.
I looked at him across the dim room, in the light of one lamp and the glow from the stove door.
The wind was rising outside, with a long hollow note in the chimney.
Rain had begun to tick on the shingles.
I had been in the same room with this man for a day and a half, and I had not stopped wanting him for one minute.
I had slapped my father in a doorway and then held him.
I had stood over a phone and heard a dead man laugh.
What I wanted was to be somewhere quiet where nobody was dying.
"The loft," I said.
"With me."
He looked at the bed in the corner, and the sleeping man.
"Your father's right there."
"Then we'll have to be quiet," I said.
I climbed the ladder first.
The loft was a slope of bare boards under the roof, with a double mattress on the floor, a wool blanket, and one small square window at the gable end.
It looked out over the dark field and the hedge, and past it, over the black water.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Mob Boss Said My Father Owed Him a Life, So He Took Mine to Keep are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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