Chapter 22: Stripped

I did not move.

I could not have moved if I had wanted to.

I looked into the black circle at the end of his arm, and I saw his finger whiten.

Ugo hit him from the side.

He came off the bench with his sling flapping and drove his good shoulder into Rocco's ribs.

The pistol went off.

The bullet tore into the painting of the oldest Don's grandfather, and plaster rained down on the floor.

Rocco twisted, and the gun came around again.

Nardo's cane came down on his wrist.

It was a heavy cane, with an iron foot, and it hit the bone with a sound I heard across the hall.

The pistol skated over the boards and stopped at Stefano's shoes.

Four Ravello men landed on Rocco.

They put him on his face on the floor and knelt on his back, and he lay there with his cheek against the wood.

Ugo sat up slowly beside him, holding his shoulder, and blood came through his fingers.

"Sorry, Don," Ugo said.

Nobody in the hall spoke.

The oldest Don stood up.

"A weapon in a Commission trial," he said. "In front of the families, in my house, with a child asleep upstairs."

He came down from the dais and stood over Rocco.

"Get him up."

They hauled Rocco to his feet.

His wrist hung wrong, and his hair had fallen across his forehead.

For the first time since I had known him, he looked like a man with something to lose.

"Take the ring," the oldest Don said.

The signet ring of the Lucarelli family was on Rocco's right hand, the broken one.

Stefano's man pulled it off over the swollen knuckle, and Rocco made a sound through his teeth.

The oldest Don put it in his pocket.

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