Chapter 21: The Bullet

Leandro's POV

I had kept a dead man's order for two years, and it took me less than a second to break it.

The old man had said I was never to rescue her.

He had not stood on a pier with a gun at her forehead.

I was bleeding from a cut in my side, but I moved without hesitating.

I stepped forward and put my body between the muzzle and Mirella.

"Move, driver," her father said.

"No."

"I have been patient with you."

"Put it down, Mr. Roselli. You have forty witnesses."

"They're my witnesses."

He looked past my shoulder at his daughter, and he said something I still hear.

"You were always the least of them. I should have let your grandfather leave you in the cradle."

The shot was very loud in the cold air.

It hit me high on the left side, below the collarbone, and it hurt for a moment, and then I felt nothing.

I sat down on the planks without meaning to.

Somebody screamed Mirella's name, and then mine.

The old captain with the white mustache struck her father's wrist with a cane.

The pistol skittered over the boards.

I saw Gaetano standing beside the sedan with his hands up and his mouth open.

I saw four Roselli men take her father by the arms, not roughly, and turn him to face the lamps.

He looked small.

Then Mirella was on her knees in front of me with both hands pressed to my shoulder.

Her black dress was dark to the elbow.

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