Chapter 20: The Blood Price

Raf's POV

I had stood in that hall and counted, because she had told me to.

Her voice came through the door.

"Raf. Come in."

I went through it low and fast, with the gun up.

Sandro fired as I crossed the threshold.

The bullet took me in the left arm, high, and spun me a half step into the bookcase.

I did not feel it.

I felt the gun in my right hand come level, and Sandro's chest in front of it, and a room full of lamplight.

He was sitting in Pietro Rinaldi's chair with a hole in his side, and he was smiling at me.

"There he is," he said. "The Montano."

Elena stood beside the desk with her pistol drawn and her face white.

She had not moved.

She had given me the order, and she had not raised her own gun on him once, because she had known I would come.

I did not understand that until later.

"Drop it," I said.

"Make me."

"Drop the gun, Pagano."

He raised it again, slowly, toward my chest.

I could have shot him.

I would have been right to.

I thought of Paolo in a good suit, at twenty-four, with his hair slicked down for a truce that was never a truce.

I thought of the call I had taken at two in the morning, and my mother's voice, and the long drive.

For three years, I had seen the man in this chair when I closed my eyes.

I had imagined this room a thousand times.

In none of them had Elena been standing six feet away.

I shot the gun out of his hand.

The pistol spun off the desk, and Sandro cried out and clutched his wrist.

I crossed the room and put my boot on his chair.

"Do it," he said through his teeth. "Finish it. You've waited long enough."

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