Thief of my Heart by Nicole French EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Nicole French
- Language: English
- Genre: Multicultural & Interracial Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
February 2001
Michael
“Here, you submit your time card. Here, you check your assignments.
You do good, I train you to drive the limo, too. Get the tips, eh?
Maybe throw you some overtime.”
I followed the owner of Zola Auto and Drive as he gave me the tenminute tour of the shabby little garage. It was nothing special, almost
identical to any other body shop in the Bronx. Except this one came with a
dedicated corner for restoring classic muscle cars and two eighties-era
limousines that probably made the rounds during prom season in the Bronx.
I took in the details: two lifts bearing cars in different stages of repair, a
cluttered office near the entry, and rickety stairs leading to a breakroom
where I’d be sleeping for the foreseeable future. This gray box, reeking of
motor oil and stale coffee, while a scratched Dean Martin record warbled
from the back corner, was my new home.
Maybe “home” was a bit generous. A place to hang my frayed Yankees
hat. A garage where I could make a little coin while I figured out what the
hell I was going to do with my life now that I’d screwed it up.
Not that I was complaining. The breakroom was already better than
most places I’d lived. Hard to beat group homes stuffed with five to a room
or a different friend’s couch every few days.
Besides, most kids who got out of Rikers ended up in shelters, if not
halfway houses, because they couldn’t find nothing better. At least I had
Father Deflorio, my ma’s old priest. He was able to hook me up with a
shabby mattress and a part-time job at this shop owned by Mattias Zola,
another parishioner. As a newly released parolee, I couldn’t ask for much
else. I might as well have been walking around with a neon sign over my
head reading “Fuck Up.”
“Key to the room.”
I blinked when a key hooked onto a green rabbit’s foot was dangled in
front of my nose. I pocketed it with a grunt. “Thanks, Mr. Zola. I appreciate
it.”
Anyone would know Mattias Zola was Italian to the bone even without
hearing that thick accent. It was something innate fewer and fewer residents
of Belmont had about them. Dude was old school, the type who always
wore a hat when he left the house, still danced with his wife to Rosemary
Clooney, and spent his summer afternoons playing cards and sipping
espresso with his cronies at the sidewalk cafes lining Arthur Avenue.
He seemed bigger than he actually was, with the kind of shoulders,
chest, and hands a guy his size would never get without doing physical
labor his whole life. His thick neck strained against the open collar of his
polo shirt. Around it gleamed a silver crucifix and San Gennaro medallion,
glinting under the shop’s fluorescents. His face, with a craggy nose and
thick black brows that didn’t match his otherwise steely gray hair, wasn’t
rude or anything. But you could tell he wouldn’t put up with your shit.
For More Read Download This Book
EPUB