The Pawn novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Tea at the Lake House

She wakes in a stranger's lake house where the enemy boss serves her tea and calls her by name, and she steals a letter opener.

I woke in a bed that was not mine, with the taste of chemicals in my mouth and my cheek throbbing.

The ceiling was white wood.

Through a tall window I could see a gray lake, flat to the horizon, and bare trees along the shore.

I was still in my wedding dress.

My hand went straight to the hem.

The envelope was still there, flat against the lace, with the ticket inside.

They had carried me out of a church and nobody had searched my skirt.

I sat up slowly and checked the rest.

The sparrow bracelet was on my left wrist.

My hair was a wreck, and my hairpins were gone.

The door was locked from outside, and the window had a steel lock that needed a key.

I pressed my forehead against the glass and told myself to think.

Cosimo had been shot.

He had been alive when they dragged me out.

That was all I knew, and I decided to hold on to it.

A key turned in the door.

A woman in a gray apron came in with a folded stack of clothes, set them on the chair without looking at me, and left.

The lock clicked behind her.

I changed fast, into jeans and a wool sweater that fit me exactly.

That bothered me more than the lock.

Nobody guesses a size that well.

The door opened again.

An older man stood there with a tea tray, and for a second I thought he had the wrong room.

He was around sixty, with silver hair, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and a gray cardigan with a loose button.

"Nerina," he said, as if he had been waiting years to say it. "Please sit. You must be dizzy."

I stayed standing.

"Who are you?"

"Aurelio Pellegrino." He set the tray on the desk by the window. "I'm sorry about your face. That was not my instruction."

I knew the name.

Everyone on Taylor Street knew it, and most of them lowered their voices to say it.

The Pellegrinos and the Ruvolos had been at each other's throats since before I was born.

"You shot up a church," I said.

"My son's men did that, and I have already spoken to him." He poured two cups. "Nobody was meant to be hurt, least of all you."

"Cosimo was shot."

"Yes." He said it gently, with no pleasure in it. "I'm told he will live. He is a hard man to kill."

He held out a cup.

I didn't take it.

He didn't seem to mind.

He set it down in front of the chair and sat across from it, his hands folded.

"You have your mother's way of looking at a door," he said.

My whole body went still.

"What did you say?"

"I only mean you have been measuring that one since I walked in." He smiled, a little sad. "It's a good instinct."

I did not believe that was what he meant.

I filed it away anyway, because I couldn't make it fit anything.

"What do you want from me?" I said.

"Nothing you aren't willing to give. You are a guest in my house."

"The door is locked."

"For a few days. Until you've heard what I have to say." He paused. "And until it's safe. Cosimo will come looking for you, and I don't want you caught in it."

"So you stole me from him to protect me from him."

"It sounds foolish when you say it like that," he said mildly.

Footsteps came down the hall, heavy and fast.

A younger man filled the doorway, thirty or so, in a leather jacket, with slicked black hair and a jaw that looked set for a fight.

He stared at me with open dislike.

"She's awake," he said. "Good. One of my men needs eight stitches in his hand, and she's going to answer for that."

"Lucio," Pellegrino said, and did not raise his voice. "Out."

"Papa, she is a Ruvolo's whore."

"Out."

Lucio's eyes stayed on me a moment longer.

Then he turned and went, and I heard his boots all the way down the hall.

"Forgive my son," Pellegrino said. "He is angry. He thinks I am being foolish."

"Are you?"

"Probably." He stood and picked up the tray, leaving my cup where it was. "Drink the tea, Nerina. It is only tea. Rest, and later we'll talk properly."

He walked to the door and turned back.

"One more thing. Your uncle is safe. No one has touched him."

My knees nearly went.

"How do you know about my uncle?"

"I know a great deal about you," he said, and went out.

The lock turned.

I stood there with my pulse in my ears.

Then I went to the desk where he had left a pen jar and a stack of paper.

There was a brass letter opener in the jar, long and thin, with a blade worn sharp from use.

I slid it up my sleeve before I let myself think about it.

The tea was still warm.

I did not drink it.

A little later the door opened a crack, and Lucio's hand came through with a phone.

He set it on the floor, screen up, and slid it across the boards to me.

"Watch," he said through the gap. "See what your husband does for you."

The video was dark and shaky.

Fire, a warehouse roof coming down in sparks, and men in black coats loading gas cans back into a truck.

A voice off camera said, "Ruvolo's people. Third one tonight."

Lucio's mouth was close to the crack.

"He started a war over a girl he's known a month," he said. "Think about why."

The door shut.

On the floor the video played again from the start.

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