From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: What the Council Took

The council sat in the back room of the family's social club, at a table made for twenty.

Eleven capos had come. Ignazio sat at the head, in the chair the Don usually took.

Nobody had asked me to sit, so I stood at Tancredi's shoulder.

"Nephew," Ignazio said. "The footage."

He turned the laptop around, and the cold room corridor played again.

Tancredi watched it all the way through.

"That's me," he said. "Six fifty-two, going in. Six fifty-five, coming out."

"The technician was found dead at ten past seven."

"Yes."

"And you're the last man who saw her."

"I am."

The old capo with the stick leaned forward. "Tell us why you went, boy."

Tancredi looked at the table, not at his uncle.

"I went to tell her to take her coat and go home," he said. "I didn't trust the floor that morning. She said her shift ended at seven and she'd be fine."

"You didn't trust the floor," Ignazio said. "Why?"

"I can't give you the reason."

"A convenient silence."

"It's the one I have."

The room muttered.

"She had a daughter in Trenton," Tancredi said, and his voice did not rise. "I left her at her post. Ten minutes later she was dead with a badge in her hand that wasn't hers."

He took the signet ring off his right hand.

It was the underboss's ring, gold and heavy, and he set it on the table in front of the old capo.

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