Chapter 22: Forty Minutes of Honest Air

Ettore's POV

I checked the tank myself.

I ran my thumb over the first-stage valve three times, and I listened to it breathe, and then I handed it to the fisherman's divers.

"Full," I said. "Forty minutes. Honest air."

My mother stood beside me on the deck of the dive boat and watched Dario go over the side in a black wetsuit with his hands bound in front of him.

The council watched from the launches around us.

Every one of them had a phone raised.

A camera on a cable went down beside him, and the picture came up on the screen bolted to the cabin wall.

It showed the bronze statue's raised arms in green water.

It showed the cage at its feet.

My divers put him inside it, shut the door, and ran the same chain through the same bars.

Then one of them took a padlock out of a pouch and held it up to the camera, and snapped it shut.

Viola stood at my shoulder with her arms crossed.

She had not said a word since the yacht.

A speaker crackled on the cabin wall.

"Ettore."

Dario's voice came out of the full-face mask, thin and fast.

"Ettore, brother. This is a joke. You know it is a joke."

I did not answer.

"I was a boy. Papa gave you the watch and the chair and the company, and gave me the leftovers. What was I supposed to do?"

"Papa gave me the watch on my eighteenth birthday because he was proud," I said. "You were thirteen, and he gave you a bicycle."

"You are not a Don. You are a diver in a black jacket."

"Look at your gauge, Dario."

The camera showed his hand rise to his chest.

The needle was full.

"I put in honest air," I said. "Forty minutes. I want you to have all forty."

"Mamma!" he cried. "Mamma, tell him!"

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