After My Four Childhood Friends Abandoned Me, I Inherited a Mafia Empire novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Seven Rounds

I looked at the pistol for a long time.

Ettore had said it would take me forty seconds, and he wanted the whole room to count them.

I put my hand flat on the cloth and counted my own way.

One, because he wanted me to pick it up and shake.

Two, because he wanted me to refuse and look small.

Three, because he had not thought of a third thing.

I picked up the gun and turned it over in my hands.

It was lighter than my grandfather's shotgun, and I knew how to find the release because Ilario had shown me on a Sunday when I was sixteen.

The magazine dropped into my palm.

I thumbed the rounds out one by one and set them on the white tablecloth in a line.

There were seven, and the room watched every one.

I slid the empty pistol back across the table until it touched Ettore's coat.

"Your toy," I said. "It's a nice one. You should keep it somewhere you won't lose it."

Somebody near the wall laughed, and it was not at me.

Ettore's smile didn't move.

"Ilario," I said.

"Yes, Marta."

"Stand up."

He stood, and two hundred men held still.

His bandaged hand hung open at his side, and his jaw was tight.

"Ettore says I hold your life," I said. "Then I'll spend it, here, in front of everyone."

Ettore leaned in.

"Sit down and eat your dinner," I said.

Nobody understood it for a moment.

Then the gray-haired captain with the cane began to laugh, a short dry bark, and a few men beside him joined in.

Ilario sat.

He picked up his fork because I had told him to, and his face went white around the mouth.

"One more question," I said, and stood so the back rows could see me.

"Ettore says any captain who votes against me votes against the man who can't say no."

"So I'll ask each of you something, and you can answer me with your hands in ninety days."

"Which of you has a man who would swear that for you?"

Nobody spoke.

I looked down the long tables at men I had known since I was small, and I watched them think about their own sons, their own drivers and their own wives.

"My grandfather didn't buy a bodyguard," I said. "He found the one man in the room who wasn't for sale. Ettore wants you to think that's a leash."

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