Chapter 21: Nothing Left to Hold

Rocco's POV

I was thirty feet from him along the gallery rail, and I did the arithmetic in the time it took him to breathe.

Two of my men had their hands inside their coats.

If one drew, two hundred people in the tiers below would be running.

The only woman I cared about in the room was standing in the open at the bottom of it.

"Don't," I said, without turning my head.

"Boss..."

"Hands out of the coats. Both of you."

They obeyed.

I put mine out where Carson could see them and walked toward him along the rail.

"Stop there," Carson said.

"I'm stopping."

I stopped at ten feet.

The muzzle came up from Ada and swung to me, and I felt it settle on my chest.

It was a strange relief.

For four years I had stood in a house full of men with guns and never once felt this clean.

"There he is," Carson said. "The great Rocco Barsanti. Come to see what his money bought."

"I came to see Dr. Winslow get her name back."

"You came to take her home. You think I don't see it?"

His mouth twisted.

"I made her. I picked her up off a church step."

"You kept her."

"I saved her!"

"You kept her in a house you owned," I said, "so she'd never say what she knew."

His eyes jerked.

"Say that again."

"You were afraid of her for four years," I said, "and you called it marriage."

The hand with the gun was shaking.

Below us the whole amphitheater had gone silent, and I could hear someone crying.

"Carson," Ada said.

Her voice came up from the floor of the room, clear and level.

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