Chapter 20: The Chair

"I know she begged," I said.

I got to my feet in the ruined green dress, with my husband's blood drying on my hands.

"I was lying in her lap. I heard every word."

Vincent's smile slipped.

"She begged for me," I said. "You've never begged for anyone, not even your son."

"You let him bleed on this floor, and you're laughing."

The ballroom was so quiet I could hear the paramedics' wheels.

Franco took one step toward the man on his knees, and his rings flashed.

"Franco," my father said.

"Papa, let me."

"No."

"He just said it on the news!"

"I know what he said."

My father's voice was calm, and it was the most frightening thing I had ever heard.

"I want him alive. I want him in a small room for a very long time, with no one to hold his arm."

Franco's hands shook.

He put them behind his back, and he held his own wrists.

The ballroom doors burst open, and men in navy jackets with yellow letters on the back poured in between the waiters.

Nobody stopped them.

"Vincent Falco," said the first, "you are under arrest."

They cuffed him on the stage.

They walked him down the center aisle past four hundred people, and not one of them looked away.

At the foot of the steps he stopped, and he turned his head toward the back curtain.

"Brooke," he said.

She was standing at the edge of the curtain with the director's headset around her neck.

She did not move.

I saw her understand that he was not asking for help.

He was telling the cameras who she was.

Two days later, on the steps of the federal courthouse, the press stood twelve deep.

The United States Attorney came out to a bank of microphones with a folder in her hand.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Don's Daughter He Left to Bleed from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.