His Test Was Fake, But My Death Was Real novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Nothing Left

Eleven pistols came out at once.

Chairs fell.

The kneeling men flattened themselves against the floor.

I did not move from the head of the table, because there was nowhere to go.

"Nobody leaves," Vincent said, and his voice was steady again. "The girl and the brothers stay. The rest of you go home and tell your wives the Carranos were finished by a recording."

Dario stood up from his chair with his good hand open.

"Count," he said.

Vincent frowned.

"Count the room, Vincent. You voted eleven. You have eleven guns. I count thirteen men who haven't drawn."

Along the table, the other lieutenants had risen slowly with their hands flat and empty.

The heavy man was still on his knees.

He lifted his head and looked at the pistols over him, and at the girl he had mocked on a bridge.

"Put them down," he said.

"Get up," Vincent hissed.

"I said put them down." He got to his feet. "I laughed at her, and you told me to laugh. You never told me you killed her mother."

There was a moment when nothing moved.

Then the doors behind me opened, and the Carrano house guard came in two by two, thirty men in the black coats Stefano had summoned at dawn, with their weapons holstered and their hands ready.

Stefano had not looked once toward the door.

He was standing at his father's chair.

"You're outnumbered, Vincent," he said quietly. "Put them on the table."

One pistol hit the wood.

Then another.

Then all eleven.

Vincent stood in the middle of the room and watched his men lay their weapons down one after another.

He looked small.

I had never seen him look small.

"Maeve," Stefano said. "Please."

I took Aldo's ring out of my sleeve.

It was warm from my skin.

I put it into Stefano's palm and closed his fingers around it.

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