Chapter 9: Her Hand in Mine

Ruggiero's POV

Ettore Albertini stood in the stockyard with a bomb under my car and told the Commission that my driver was a liar.

He did it calmly.

He said a man paid by the Falsettis would say anything, and that Fabrizio Tedaldi had been in his house all night.

The old doorman looked at him for a long time.

Then he said the sit-down was postponed until the full moon, and that the Commission's own men would photograph the car.

That was all. It was enough.

Every man from every Family saw Fabrizio's face when the driver said his name.

I drove home with my wife beside me and my hand around hers.

She did not say a word the whole way. Neither did I.

It was past two in the morning when I found her again.

She had been in my sister-in-law's room since sundown. I had told the guards to let her be.

I opened the door a few inches.

A lamp was lit beside the bed. Costanza slept with the machine ticking beside her, gray and quiet, her hair loose across the pillow.

Nerina sat in the chair beside her with her feet drawn up under her.

She had fallen asleep with one hand still holding her sister's wrist.

I stood in the doorway longer than I should have.

I had been the don of this Family for fourteen years. I had stood over four men I had to bury, and I had not slept badly after any of them.

I did not know what to do with how tight my chest went now.

She had said thirty-six, and I had believed her before she finished the sentence.

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