When Doom Found Violet novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Zane
Doom got to the door first, with his jeans on and nothing else.
I stayed behind the bedpost, dragging the green dress back on and settling his patch over it, and fixed my hair with both hands.
Zane stood in the hall with his hat in his fist.
He looked at the floor, at the ceiling, and at a spot beside my head.
"Sorry," he said. "I know what I interrupted."
"You do not," I said.
"I do. I'm your brother. I heard it from the stairs."
I put a pillow over my face.
Doom made a sound that might have been a laugh.
"Say it," he said to Zane. "Whatever you came to say."
"Not here. I want the table."
"The table's empty."
"Then fill it," Zane said. "I'd like them to hear me."
It took ten minutes for the men to come back from lunch.
Zane stood at the foot of the table in his good shirt, with a ledger under his arm and a key on a ring in his hand.
He had never looked so tired, or so sure.
I sat beside Doom with my hands in my lap.
"Six years ago, I came to this club with a business that was going under," Zane said. "You gave me a loan I couldn't have gotten anywhere else. I paid it back in the only way I had. I ran your money through my shop, and I never asked what you carried."
"You did good work, Zane," the VP said.
"I did dangerous work. I lied to my sister every night for six years to do it."
He looked at me.
I looked back.
"I told myself it was to protect her," he said. "It was to protect me. I liked being the man with the cash. I liked that you called me when it counted."
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