The Last Time You Chose Her novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Price of the Blessing

Pietro's POV

They sent me out of the sacristy before the vote.

A Calderara has no voice in a Sartorelli seat, and the oldest capo shut the door in my face with great courtesy.

I stood in the cold stone corridor with my arm throbbing in its sling and listened to the murmur through the wood.

I could not hear the words.

I could hear her.

Marta's voice rose once, level and quiet, and then Ugo's thinner one, and then a silence.

I put my forehead against the door.

I thought of her kneeling on the altar steps with her mother's blood to her knees.

She had not let go of the wound.

I had never wanted anyone so badly in my life, and for once it had nothing to do with her body.

"You've gone soft," my father said behind me.

I turned.

He was standing under a plaster saint in his black overcoat, with his stick in both hands.

He was fifty-nine, and the war had cost him two sons and most of his temper.

He had sat through the whole scene at the back of the Calderara pews and had not moved.

"Papa."

"It's a good show," he said. "The girl is a diamond. Now I have a question."

"Ask it."

"I signed a pact with Rosalba Sartorelli. The pact was a Sartorelli daughter for a Calderara son. The daughter I signed for is in handcuffs. So tell me what I am holding now."

"She is the eldest. She's the first."

"Then she isn't a daughter anymore. She's the head of a house." He tapped the floor with his stick. "A head of a house doesn't marry into mine. She marries beside it. And I don't give my blessing to that for free."

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