The Don's Runaway Substitute novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Ring and the Gate

Dario crossed the cellar in three steps and turned the phone over.

Vincenzo's name was on the screen, with a call timer that had been running since the car.

For a moment Dario just looked at it.

Then he lifted it to his ear.

"Nephew," he said. "You heard her. She asked me a question, and I answered it."

I could not hear Vincenzo's voice, but I could see Dario's face change.

"No. You come to the fence alone, or the next sound you hear is her. Do you understand me?"

He hung up and put the phone in his pocket.

He had not looked at my hands once.

For the whole time he had been talking, I had been dragging the plastic cord back and forth across the stone of Allegra's ring, against one sharp prong of the setting.

It parted with a small dry snap.

I held my wrists together so he would not see.

"Up," Dario said, and hauled me out of the chair by my arm. "You and I are going for a walk."

He took me up the stairs and out through the cider-house door.

The orchard was black and cold, and the cherry trees stood in long rows with their branches bare.

The fence ran along the far edge, and beyond it there was a sliver of lit road.

Vincenzo stood on the road side of the gate with his hands open at his sides.

He had no gun in them.

I could not see his two men anywhere, and I understood that was on purpose.

"Let her walk," Vincenzo said.

"I'm going to let you watch." Dario pulled a pistol from his cardigan and put it against my temple. "Third tree from the wall, nephew. Come look at your fiancée."

"She's my wife."

"Not for long."

Vincenzo looked at me across forty yards of dark.

I looked back, and I mouthed the same two words I had mouthed for the photograph.

Wait.

His jaw moved.

He stayed where he was.

I had asked a man who needed to act to hold still, and he was doing it for me.

"Uncle," I said.

Dario's grip tightened on my arm. "Quiet."

"You forgot your cake."

"What?"

"You left the box. You never leave the box."

He turned his head a few inches, only to check the cellar door behind us.

That was all I needed.

I dropped my full weight at his knee, and my hands came out of the cord and caught his gun wrist.

I sank my teeth into the back of his hand.

He screamed.

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