The Pawn novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: She Goes Alone

Nerina's POV

I called the number on the photograph's back from a pay phone outside a laundromat.

Pellegrino had written it there in small, neat handwriting while Cosimo was still talking.

He answered on the second ring.

"I thought you might," he said.

"My uncle. Let him go, and I'll come."

"Of course. There is a parking structure on Halsted, the third level. Come alone, and he walks out as you walk in."

"If you hurt him again..."

"Nerina." He sounded almost hurt. "I never meant to hurt him at all."

I hung up and stood there with my forehead against the cold brick.

I had not slept.

I had lain in Cosimo's arms all night with my heart going, and I had stared at the dark and understood one thing.

Everyone who loved me had lied to me.

My mother, who left a man behind in Lake Geneva and never said his name.

Cosimo, who had a thing he was not telling me and had asked for one more night.

Even my uncle, who had taken the money.

The only person who had told me anything plain was the man I was walking toward.

I knew how stupid that was.

I went anyway.

The parking structure was gray and half empty, and my boots rang on the concrete as I climbed the ramps.

On the third level, a black sedan sat at the far end with its lights off.

My uncle stood beside it.

His face was a mess of yellow and purple, and someone had cut the gag away, but his hands were still tied.

He saw me and began to weep.

"Nerina, no. No, go back."

"It's all right, Zio."

"It's not, it's not, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I never..."

"Let him go," I said, to the man at the sedan's open door.

It was Lucio.

He looked tired, with the gauze still on his jaw and a bruise under one eye.

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he took a knife from his pocket and cut my uncle's hands loose.

"Go," Lucio said to him. "That way. Don't stop."

My uncle stumbled toward the stairwell, glancing back at me every second step.

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