Second chance for the Mafia prince (January and Gulliver) novel Chapter 59

Watching Her Work Part I

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She was finding it surprisingly easy to work with Gulliver in the room. Holding up a piece of agate she grinned at Gulliver, “reminds me of Henry.”

He laughed, “does it now?”

“Yes. I was working on a piece for a customer when the thing with Henry went down. They’d asked for something stark and eccentric and I was a bit stalled on it and then suddenly I was sitting here, breathing in the remnants of his odor and thought of the black stones I had in the cabinet out front. If I’d not gone out to get them, you and Thisbe likely would have come in the store front, met with Lottie and then been on your merry way. Damn Henry,” she muttered under her breath but found she didn’t really mean it.

Gulliver who was sitting near her watching her work flicked her shoulder, “not nice. It’s a good thing. I found my daughter and you found out you have nothing to fear from me. I will forever be grateful to the smelly little critter for inspiring you to go looking for black agate.”

She looked at him in surprise, “you know this is agate?”

“Well yeah. You used to have your textbooks out and your quline sites open all the time. I also did a deep dive la night:38 into stones. I was hoping to find some kind of sexv. I love vou.

Watching Her Work Part I

stone but I wasn’t lucky.”

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January shook her head, “you really didn’t need to buy all these stones.”

“I wanted to. Where do you keep them? Do you have a safe on the site?”

“I do. We can display a few of them but the more expensive ones I’ll keep locked up here or in my safety deposit box at the bank. We don’t usually have break and enter problems in our town, but you never know. My safe is bolted to the floor so it can’t easily be removed but it’s certainly not blast proof.”

“I can get my fellas to come in and secure the store for you. Considering we found audio and video equipment here, it’s probably not a bad idea to bolster your security here as well.”

“I’d appreciate that,” she said seriously. “Now that we’re getting more and more orders, especially with some of the notice I got at the last fair in Burlington, I will likely need to keep more product on hand.”

“We’ll get it sorted. Are you happy to keep this store front or would you prefer something bigger?”

“This is good for me. We’re out of the way. Most of our sales are online. I did a lot through Etsy and a few other online 2/5 crafting sites. I’ve gone to a lot of craft and artisanal fairs

12:38

Watching Her Work Part I

throughout the state.”

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“It never once dawned on me to look in such places,” he said seriously.

“No?”

“No. I honestly for a brief time thought you’d been taken. Then I realized you’d run away and wanted to make a life for yourself. I thought for sure you’d go somewhere like Miami or LA because your work is good enough to be on runways and if you weren’t going to hit a New York runway, it was going to be there. It also never occurred to me that you’d all change your name to your mother’s name. I couldn’t fathom any reason for you to leave me, so it didn’t make sense to me you were hiding from me.

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“What did you think I left for?”

“I didn’t know. As I said, originally I thought perhaps you were taken by an enemy. Then I considered for some time that Duchess got to you, but I’d made damn sure nobody in Europe knew

your name. Everything I did with you was discretely done. Nobody back home knew you and Thisbe were friends. People knew Thisbe had a friend, but nobody tied me to her friend other than I took you both everywhere. She was a good

cover.”

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You really thought I just up and left you with no reason?”

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Watching Her Work Part I

“I thought perhaps you were all hurt somehow.”

“What?”

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