Chapter 7: Taylor Street

The room went loud after that.

Old men talking over each other, Pietro calling for patience, chairs scraping.

Mickey looked at his own hands, at the place on his stomach where nothing showed yet.

The day it's born.

Then Vin's hand was near his elbow, not touching.

"Can I get you out of here?"

"I can walk."

"I know. Can I walk with you?"

They went out the front, under the green awning, into Taylor Street.

Vin's driver pulled the car to the curb.

Vin waved him on.

"We'll walk a while," he said. "Follow us."

So they walked down Taylor Street with a black car crawling behind them.

Mickey made it a block before he exploded.

"'The child is mine,'" he said.

"It is."

"You said it like you were claiming a parking space. In front of twenty men. Like I was the trunk it came in."

Vin stopped walking.

"That's not how I meant it."

"I know how you meant it. I heard how it sounded."

"What should I have said?"

"Nothing! I'd already said it. I was doing fine."

"You were doing better than fine," Vin said.

"You stood at the foot of that table and made my uncle shut his mouth. Nobody's done that in thirty years."

That knocked some of the wind out of Mickey.

He started walking again so Vin wouldn't see it.

"So what now," he said. "You get confirmed. When?"

"The full moon. The twenty-fourth."

"Pietro's sitting in your father's chair, Vin. He's been sitting in it for a year."

"Then I'll get the will out of that vault."

"Which is asleep, and which I'm the only one who can wake up without wrecking."

"I know."

"So you need me."

Vin looked at him sideways.

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