Chapter 7: Seven Stitches

I took the car keys from the hall table, and the two men Massimo had assigned me followed without a word.

We reached Red Hook after dark. The Corvi docks were a long run of warehouses and cranes behind a chain fence, lit by yellow lamps.

I heard the shot before I saw the gate.

By the time the car stopped, men were scattered behind crates on both sides. Massimo's cars sat crooked across the entrance with their doors open.

Nobody was firing now. Everybody was pointing.

In the middle of the yard, Adriano stood with his hands open at his sides. His left sleeve was dark from the shoulder down.

"Hold your fire," he said to the men behind him. "All of you. I mean it."

"He shot first!" a Santoro driver yelled. "He pulled a piece on us!"

"I pulled nothing," Adriano said. "Your man fired from the car. Mine have their weapons on the ground."

He was right. I could see a line of rifles laid in the dust behind the Corvi crates.

I got out of the car and walked into the yard.

"Livia!" Massimo's voice cracked across the gravel. "Get back in the car!"

"No."

"I'm not asking."

"Neither am I." I kept walking. "He's bleeding. Somebody get me a light and a clean table."

Nobody moved.

"Now," I said, in the voice I used on the ward, and a Corvi man I didn't know ran for a lamp.

Adriano's face was gray under the tan. He looked at me as I came up and said, quietly, "You came all this way."

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