I Left the Underboss for the Man Who Remembered Me novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Camel Coat

Ettore's POV

I went down the steel stairs with my shirt open and the pistol in my hand.

The two men by the black car saw it and stopped talking.

One of them was Cesare's driver, the one who had sat on the corner at dawn.

The other was a stranger with a camera around his neck.

"Evening," I said.

"We're only here for Miss Greco," the driver said. "Mr. Aurelio is worried about her."

"She's staying with the Orsinis tonight."

"That isn't her decision."

"It is now." I pointed the gun at the pavement, not at him. "Go home. Tell him she's under the roof of a house that has a vote on Friday."

The man with the camera lifted it, and I took one step and put my hand over the lens.

He gave me the camera without arguing.

I took the memory card out and snapped it in half, and handed him back the empty camera.

"You have one more photograph," I said to the driver, "and it will be of you in the harbor. Go."

They went.

Before the car turned the corner, the driver's phone rang.

I heard him say, "Yes, Don Aurelio."

Then he rolled down the window and held the phone out to me.

"He wants you," he said.

I took it.

"Ettore." The voice was warm, rounded, an old man's voice that had been charming people into signing things for forty years. "I think it's time we talked. Come to Park Avenue. Alone, tonight. Or tomorrow morning, Gianna's lovely photograph goes to every paper in the city."

"Which paper?"

"Do you want to find out?"

I looked up at the window of my own apartment.

She was standing in it, in my shirt, with the compass in her hand, watching me.

"I'll come," I said.

I told her on the landing.

"No," she said.

"Gianna."

"He wants you in a room without me. He wants to break you the way he broke Cesare."

"Then I'll listen, and say no."

"And if you don't say no?"

I touched her face, the edge of her jaw.

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