Mature
Length7h 7m
About this audiobook
His father's ring sits heavy on Dante's pinky, the onyx scarred by the bullet that went through the old man's hand before it killed him. Marco Vitale was shot in the back of the head and left in the Gowanus Canal, and the debt he was owed is six months overdue.
Domenico Lombardi will not pay it. He slides fifty thousand across a bar table and calls it a gift for Dante's trouble, and then he makes the mistake of mentioning his daughter's inheritance.
The agreement was signed by both fathers: pay in full, or surrender the collateral.
So Dante sends a car to Brooklyn Heights for a twenty-year-old who works at a bakery on Montague Street. He had seen Chiara Lombardi exactly once, three years earlier at her mother's funeral, seventeen and standing beside her father's pew wearing a face he recognised from his own mirror.
When they take the bag off her head he is expecting tears. What he gets is a girl with eyes like river stones who does not blink, and who throws a cup of coffee in his face, and who later sings a Sicilian lullaby through the basement door until he has to tell her to stop, because it is the one his mother used to sing.
Chiara is not passive. She gets to a phone and asks dispatch to pass a message to Agent Reeves.
At the same time, Dante's uncle Enzo has been taking calls from Lombardi without him, and proposing terms about a captive who is not his to trade: forty Czech rifles and a hundred thousand in cash for a handover at a bakery on Mulberry, done by midnight. Enzo calls Chiara a rat. Enzo's father tried the same thing on Marco Vitale twenty years ago.
At home there is Rosa, who is six, has a missing front tooth and a stuffed rabbit she will not let him throw away, and who studies a burnt pancake the way her father studies a man across a negotiating table.
This is a dark mafia romance about a man collecting a debt he never expected to collect, a woman who refuses to be anyone's bargaining chip, a family meeting where the chair at the head of the table has been set deliberately too low, and a traitor whose name arrives late. The romance is closed-door, and it ends in a dark kitchen before dawn with a lease crinkled in her hand and a terrible menu written out in his.
Audiobook details
GenreRomance
Length7 hrs 7 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Dedication
2Chapter 1 - The Debt I Never Meant to Collect
3Chapter 2 - The Cage They Built for Me
4Chapter 3 - The First Crack
5Chapter 4 - The Ghost Who Sings
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapter 5 - A Wall of Kindling
7Chapter 6 - The Shape of the Enemy’s Hands
8Chapter 7 - The Daughter He Keeps
9Chapter 8 - The Princess Who Refused
10Chapter 9 - The Reckoning Bargain
11Chapter 10 - The Shot That Missed
12Chapter 11 - The First Time I Thanked Him
13Chapter 12 - The Lie We Told Ourselves
14Chapter 13 - The Story of the Lockbox
15Chapter 14 - The Snow Tastes Like Her
16Chapter 15 - The Traitor’s Name
17Chapter 16 - The Second Time She Chose Him
18Chapter 17 - The Vow of the Undertow
19Chapter 18 - The Vulture Circles
20Chapter 19 - The First True Fight
21Chapter 20 - The Warehouse of Lies
22Chapter 21 - The Cost of Her Truth
23Chapter 22 - The Snake Strikes First
24Chapter 23 - The Iron Tide
25Chapter 24 - The Hospital Room Vigil
26Chapter 25 - The Rose of the Undertow
27Chapter 26 - The Den of Vipers
28Chapter 27 - The Door She Opened
29About the Author
30The End
31About the Author
32Also by Jax Holloway
33Acknowledgements
34A Note from the Author
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