Chapter 21: What Marco Did Not Decide

Marco's POV

By ten past nine her chair at the table was still empty.

I had stopped being a man who could be talked out of anything.

The old man who had called the vote sat at the head of his own dining room.

His hands were folded on a white cloth.

"The heir is late," he said to the table. "The law is plain. A quarter of an hour, and the seat is forfeit."

"She is on her way," Sergio said, standing.

"Then where is she?"

Sergio looked at me.

My phone had been buzzing against my leg for ten minutes, and I took it out and read the screen.

It was the driver's number.

I stepped into the hall and answered it.

"Mr. Volkov." His voice was thick and slurred. "They took her from the pumps. Two men, and a car behind."

"Where are you?"

"In the shop. The clerk is holding a towel to my head."

"Which way?"

"South, toward the city. I got the plate."

"Give it to me."

He gave it, and I wrote it on my hand with a pen from the old man's hall table.

Then I called the six men outside.

I did not tell Sergio what I was doing, because he was inside the room holding the whole table in place with his voice.

He had asked me not to leave him.

I left him anyway.

The plate belonged to a car the Gilt Room had bought two years before.

I drove down faster than I had ever driven, with the six men behind me in two black cars.

I do not remember a single red light.

The doorman at the front took one look at my face and stepped aside.

"Where is Elsa?" I said.

"Upstairs, sir. The office."

"Where is the girl?"

His eyes went to the floor.

"Where," I said.

"The cellar. Under the red room."

I took him by the collar and put him against the wall.

"Open it."

He opened it.

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