Chapter 9: Lilies With a Black Ribbon

Adriano's POV

I drove back to Red Hook with the window down and the stitches pulling at my shoulder.

She had stood up in a room full of Santoro captains and put a man's own doorman in front of him.

It was done in ten minutes, and nobody had touched a gun.

I had planned for a lot of ways Sunday could go. I hadn't planned for that.

I hadn't planned for the end of it either.

From the road I had seen Massimo turn on the room, and Livia told me the rest at the gate. He meant to marry her sister before the month was out.

Bianca had not said yes. I had watched her not say it, and she had not looked surprised.

I parked in front of the third warehouse and sat with the engine off, looking at my left hand on the wheel.

The scar across it was old. I had stopped noticing it years ago.

She hadn't.

On Wednesday she had looked at it for one second too long.

My lieutenant was waiting on the iron stairs. He was fifty, with a shaved head and a limp from a dock accident.

He had been my father's man before he was mine.

"Well?" he said.

"Seven to five. It's done."

He let out a low whistle. "The old man held the vote with his own son against it?"

"His own son was the one the doorman named."

"Christ. And the girl?"

"She's not a girl," I said.

He raised an eyebrow, and I let it go.

Upstairs, I sat behind the steel desk and lifted the lilies from the box where I'd put them.

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