The Pawn novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Altar
Nerina says I do in front of three hundred people, and masked men carry her out of the church before the groom can finish his vow.
Cosimo Ruvolo's men closed Taylor Street at noon, so the whole neighborhood watched me walk to my own wedding.
They stood on stoops and in doorways with their coats pulled tight against the December wind.
A man in a black overcoat stood on every corner, and none of them looked at the crowd.
My uncle held my arm.
His palm was wet through my sleeve.
He owed Cosimo four hundred thousand dollars, and that was the reason there was a wedding at all.
"You don't have to say it loud," he whispered. "Just say it."
"I'm saying it, Zio," I said. "I told you I would."
I had told him the night Cosimo came into the restaurant.
Cosimo had watched me carry a tray of cannoli across the floor, and he had said to my uncle, "That one."
Three weeks later I sat across a table from him and gave him my terms.
The debt wiped out.
My uncle's name left alone.
And no lies, ever, about anything.
He had agreed to all three before I finished the sentence.
At the church steps, a man in a gray suit stepped out to meet us.
Rocco Ruvolo was Cosimo's younger brother, thirty-three, with the same dark eyes and a gentler mouth.
He kissed my uncle on both cheeks and then turned to me.
"You look like a bride, Nerina," he said. "Don't be afraid. Nothing will touch you today."
"I'm not afraid," I said.
It was mostly true.
Under the hem of my dress, sewn flat against the lace, was an envelope.
It held two thousand three hundred dollars and a bus ticket to Cleveland, bought under a name that wasn't mine.
I had stitched it in myself, two nights ago, with my door locked.
I touched the hem once through the silk.
Then I walked inside.
The church was full.
Three hundred people turned in the pews, and I heard my own heels on the marble the whole way down the aisle.
Cosimo stood at the altar with his back straight and his hands loose at his sides.
He was thirty-six.
He had a hard jaw, a scar through his left eyebrow, and a black suit tailored close to his shoulders.
Every man in the room was afraid of him, and he was looking at only me.
I stopped a step short of him.
I still had the ticket.
I could turn around, walk back up that aisle, and be on a bus in an hour.
My uncle would lose the restaurant.
Maybe worse than the restaurant.
So I stayed where I was.
"You brought it," Cosimo said, very low.
I held out my left wrist.
My mother's thin gold bracelet hung there, the one with the tiny sparrow.
When we met, he had asked me to bring one thing of my mother's to the wedding.
He had asked before I ever told him she was dead.
I hadn't thought about that until now.
He took my wrist in his hand and turned it over.
His thumb settled on the inside, right over my pulse, and stayed there.
"You're shaking," he said.
"I'm angry," I said.
"Good." His thumb moved once. "Stay angry. It suits you."
My face got hot, and I hated that he saw it.
The priest cleared his throat and began.
He spoke about family and loyalty, and I heard none of it.
I was watching Cosimo's thumb, still on my wrist, and the way he had not looked away from me once.
"Do you, Nerina Castellane, take this man," the priest said.
"I do," I said.
I said it clearly, so that the back pews could hear.
Cosimo's mouth began to curve.
Then the glass in the east windows blew inward.
The first shot hit the candle stand beside the priest, and the second took a piece out of the altar rail.
Women screamed, and the pews emptied toward the doors.
Cosimo's arm came around my waist and threw me down behind the altar.
He covered me with his whole body and drew a gun I hadn't known he carried.
"Stay down," he said. "Don't move."
Men in black coats poured in through the sacristy door, and these were not his men.
Rocco shot one of them in the chest.
Cosimo fired twice, and then something hit him, and he jerked against me.
Blood came warm through my veil onto my cheek.
"Cosimo!"
"I'm fine," he said through his teeth. "Stay down."
A hand closed on my arm and tore me out from under him.
The man holding me wore a mask.
I pulled the pin out of my hair and drove it into the back of his hand.
He swore and let go, and a second man hit me across the face.
Everything went white for a moment.
Then they carried me out through the sacristy, my dress dragging on the stone.
The last thing I saw over the masked man's shoulder was Cosimo on his knees by the altar.
His shoulder was soaked red.
He had his gun up and was trying to stand.
"Nerina!" he shouted. "I'm coming for you!"
They threw me into a van, and the door slid shut on his voice.
Someone pressed a cloth over my mouth, and it smelled sharp and sweet.
In the dark, a man in the front seat held a phone to his ear.
"We have her," he said. "She's fine. Not a mark on her, like you asked."
He listened, and then he laughed.
"No. Ruvolo can't follow us. He's still bleeding on the altar."
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