Bound by Honor novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Old Friends

Dario came out of the pew behind me and stood at my shoulder.

My father's eyes went to him, then to the jacket on my arms, then back to my face.

"Bee," he said. "Let me explain."

"Explain what the kids must not know."

"Sweetheart, sit."

"I will stand."

Orazio set his cane against the pew and smiled, the same warm smile he had worn at the dinner table.

It looked worse now.

"Come, come," he said. "We are family. Nobody needs to shout in a church."

"I'm not shouting," I said. "I'm counting."

"Counting what?"

"How many things you both let me believe."

Nobody spoke.

A candle guttered at the back of the church, and the shadows jumped.

"The war," I said. "Tell me about the war."

My father lowered his shoulders.

"It ended two years ago," he said.

"In a diner in Cleveland."

"Orazio and I sat across from each other for nine hours, and by the end we were done."

"Two years."

"The shooting stopped. The money kept moving. We did not tell our people."

"Why not?"

"Because Silvio was selling us both," Orazio said.

"To rival crews and to the feds."

"Small things first, a truck route, a name. Then bigger."

"Carmine's men were dying on his tips and mine on yours."

"Every man in both houses blamed the other side."

"So you agreed to keep fighting. On paper."

"We agreed to keep the war alive so Silvio would keep talking. A man who thinks the war is on, sells."

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