Chapter 9: Massimo's POV

Massimo's POV

I got her out of the Cammarata club without anyone raising a hand.

That was the first thing that had gone right in twenty years.

She walked ahead of me down the front steps, the green silk catching the lamps, her back straight.

She did not look behind her.

I put her in the back of my car and shut the door, and stood for a moment with my palm flat on the roof.

My hand wasn't steady.

I had spent a week telling myself I'd feel nothing when I saw her.

I had been thirteen on the dock in Palermo.

It was raining, and the boat was already pulling at its ropes.

My father had thrust a small girl into my arms, a six-year-old in a coat two sizes too big, who smelled of smoke and had a bruise on her cheek.

She did not cry.

She looked at me with her mother's eyes and said, in a whisper, "Are they going to shoot us?"

"No," I said. I was a boy, and I lied.

She bit me when I tried to pass her over the rail.

I still had the mark.

My father put her on that boat, and a month later he was dead, and the last thing he said to me was a name.

Carmine Cammarata.

I had told the Don.

I had told the Don's lawyers and every captain who would listen.

I had not told Fiora.

It was the one piece of the file I had kept back, and I had known all night that I would have to answer for it.

Three days ago I had read a school record that put Cinzia Cammarata in Fiora's building from the first week.

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