Bound by Honor novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Saint Rocco's

Saint Rocco's side door had been unlocked, and Dario knew the way in the dark.

"I was an altar boy here until I was fourteen," he whispered. "A nun used to hide the key in the third flowerpot."

We slipped inside and let the door settle.

The church smelled of old wax and cold stone.

A few votive candles flickered at the back, red in their glass cups.

The big nave beyond them was a black cavern of dark pews.

Voices came from the front.

Dario took my hand and drew me down into the last pew on the left.

We crouched behind a stone pillar with our heads below the backrest.

I could hear my own pulse.

"...every captain, every ally, both families," my father said.

His voice carried easily in the stone hall.

I had never heard it so relaxed.

"Saturday, two weeks from today, ten in the morning."

"Four hundred people in the pews, and every door watched from the inside."

"Mine are ready," Orazio said. "Eighteen men in the choir loft and the sacristy. Your twelve are in the back."

"And Silvio?"

"Silvio walks in at the vows."

There was a third voice, thinner, a young man's.

"He told me last night, Don Orazio."

"He wants to take the whole front row."

"He says the old men will fold when the doors shut."

"What did you tell him?"

"That I'd bring six more of his people. He trusted me."

"Good boy. Go home, say nothing."

Footsteps, then a door clicking shut.

I raised my head an inch above the pew.

In the front of the church, near the altar rail, two old men sat in the first row.

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