Chapter 11: March

Rocco's study is on the second floor of the house in Oak Park, at the end of the hall.

I did not knock.

He was at his desk with a glass of water and a ledger, in shirtsleeves.

He stood up when he saw my face.

"Show me what you signed in March," I said.

"Livia."

"Show me. Or I'll go down to Aldo's house again, and he'll show me."

He didn't argue.

He opened the bottom drawer and took out a sheet of heavy paper.

It had the council's seal embossed at the top.

He laid it on the blotter between us.

I read it standing up.

It was short.

It said the Don of the Brandolini family agreed to the council's vote for a second wife of the table.

It said that if the second wife bore a child within two years, the council might release the first wife from the family's table.

She would be given a pension and a house.

At the bottom, in black ink, was his signature.

Dated the nineteenth of March.

I picked it up and threw it at his chest.

It was only a sheet of paper, and it fluttered to the floor, which made me angrier.

"You signed away my seat."

"Yes."

"With a pen. In front of twenty men."

"Yes." He didn't look down at it.

"Three days before that vote, Sandro handed me an envelope. Eleven photographs of you."

His jaw moved.

"Your shop, your door, your window. Aldo's men had a long lens on you for a week."

I stopped.

"He wasn't asking me for anything," Rocco said. "He was telling me where you slept."

He looked at me.

"I signed because I thought if I gave him the paper, he'd leave you alone while I found a way to stop him."

"You thought."

"I was wrong."

"You didn't tell me."

"No."

"Because you thought I'd run."

"Because I knew you wouldn't run." He came around the desk.

"You'd have gone to Taylor Street and stood in front of him."

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