Chapter 15: The Man at the Grave

Marcello's POV

I left her asleep at half past four, with her hand open on my pillow.

It took everything I had to shut the door.

Eli Keane's grave is in a cemetery on the south side, under an oak that has no leaves in winter.

The stone is plain gray granite, with his name and two dates.

I had paid for it. I had never told anyone, and I had never once been there in daylight.

The ground was iron-hard, and my breath hung white in front of me.

I stood at the foot of the grave with my hat in my hands.

"I took your sister to bed tonight," I said.

"I'm not asking your blessing. You'd laugh at me."

"She called me love tonight. No. I called her that. She said yes."

The wind moved in the oak.

"I'm going to get a woman out of a clinic this morning, and then I'm going to finish the man who sent you into that fire."

"I should have gone through that gate with you. I've thought so every day for three years."

I put my palm on the cold stone.

"I'll look after her," I said. "Not because you asked me to."

Gwen's father had asked for a meeting at the clinic, by messenger, in a cream envelope with no name.

The meeting was set for eight, in the atrium café, where families drink coffee and wait for news.

I came early, with four men.

The clinic stood behind a brick wall and a garden of dead roses.

Glass doors, a marble floor, and a smell of lilies and floor wax.

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