The Capo's Daughter Needs No Permission novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Price
They brought Nico up the cellar stairs with his wrists still taped.
One eye had swollen shut. Dried blood ran down from his hairline into his collar.
Twelve capos went dead still.
He saw me and tried to smile with his split lip, and it was the worst smile I'd ever seen on him.
"Hey," he said, hoarse. "You didn't get my note?"
"I got it," I said. "You left out the part about the basement."
The boss said, "Cut him loose."
The doorman cut the tape with a pocketknife and wouldn't meet my eyes.
The boss took a fountain pen from his cardigan and a small brass stamp from his vest.
He wrote across the back of my slip in a slow hand, and pressed the stamp into the corner.
The seal was red, not black.
"This one is good," he said, and held it out to me. "The life of Nico Falcone is yours, signorina, and no man in this room will touch it."
I took it.
My hand was shaking so hard that the paper rattled.
"Now," the boss said, and turned to my father. "The price."
My father stood up. "Sir, with respect, I had my reasons."
"Sit, Carmine."
He sat.
"Your house kept a ward nine years on a lie," the boss said, quietly, to the whole table. "Your daughter had to cross a country to be heard. And you put a good soldier in my cellar to protect yourself from a boy's testimony."
"I was protecting the Family."
"You were protecting Carmine."
The room waited.
"Thirty days," the boss said. "You give up the black seal and the Newark crew. Your son's name goes forward, if he wants it. What happened in Elizabeth stays in Elizabeth, because that is how a Family stays alive."
He did not look at me when he said it.
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