Chapter 23: Chester Before the Families

Erin's POV

I looked at him.

He was an old man in wet clothes, with his wrists cuffed over a bloody bandage and a blue cap gone dark with seawater.

The harbor wind moved the white stubble on his jaw.

I had expected to feel something large.

I felt tired, and clear, and very awake.

"I made you, kid," said Chester, quietly. "Everything you can do, I put in your hands."

"You put a rifle in my hands," I said. "Everything else I did on my own."

He opened his mouth.

"Take him to the car," I said to Ronan.

Ronan nodded, and two of his men took Chester by the elbows.

Chester did not look back at the harbor.

He looked at me all the way to the road.

The Compact sat again at nine that night.

All three heads of the families were there, not only the envoys.

The Benedetti head was a stooped old man in a gray overcoat.

He had come in person because of a phone call from the Orlov envoy.

His own envoy stood behind his chair and did not lift his eyes.

The Orlov head sat opposite, a broad woman with rings on every finger.

Between them, at the foot of the long table, Chester stood in chains with a guard on each side.

Sean had given up the head of the table to the three of us.

I sat at his right hand, in the founder's chair, though no one had said it was mine yet.

The seventeen from the barge sat along the wall on folding chairs, in blankets, with bowls of soup nobody had touched.

The woman with gray in her hair held her son against her side.

He had not let go of her since six o'clock.

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