Chapter 21: What No Court Could Touch

The window beside the altar burst inward in a rain of colored glass.

Ettore came through it with a coat over his head and a pew bench in both hands.

Two of the oldest capo's sons came in behind him.

"Carina!"

"Here!"

He crossed the burning aisle and cut the cord at my wrists with a knife.

Then he turned to Dario and cut his, without a word.

Smoke filled the chapel to the rafters, and I could hardly see.

"The window," Ettore said. "Now."

He lifted me to the sill, and the broken glass cut my palms.

Behind us a roof beam groaned.

I looked back.

Dario was standing in the center of the aisle with fire running along the wood on both sides of him.

"Dario!"

"Go," he said.

The beam came down.

He threw himself forward and put his arm up over my head, and it landed across his forearm and his shoulder instead.

He cried out once.

Ettore dragged us both through the window by our coats.

We landed in the snow, and I rolled over, coughing so hard I could not breathe.

Behind us the chapel roof folded in on itself with a sound I felt in my chest.

Dario lay on his back with his sleeve burned to the skin.

His eyes were open.

"You're alive," he said, to the sky.

"So are you," I said. "Don't you dare."

Ettore held my face between his hands and looked at me, and he was shaking.

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