The Pawn novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Without Her

Cosimo's POV

Lucio dragged her out of my car by the elbow, and she let him.

She looked back at me once over his shoulder.

"Go," she said. "I'm going back up the lane. Go."

I had promised no men on that road.

So I put the gun on the seat and drove, and in the mirror I watched her walk toward Pellegrino's headlights with her chin up.

It was the worst mile I have ever driven.

I did not turn around, and I did not tell Rocco why I wanted to hit something.

By three in the morning we had hit four things.

A trucking yard in Cicero that ran Pellegrino's cash.

A laundry on Western with a vault under the dryers.

Two pallets of cigarettes at a dock.

A bank manager who woke up to find his keys in my hand, and was very quick with the code.

None of it was for her.

It was what a man does with his hands when the one thing he wants has told him to wait.

At dawn Rocco found me in the yard, sitting on an overturned crate, watching the fire eat the roof.

"Eleven men knew the church," he said. "I have ten of them in the cellar at the estate."

"And?"

"They're crying, and none of them is lying."

"And the eleventh?"

"Your father's driver."

I stood up too fast and my shoulder tore.

"He's seventy," Rocco said. "He drove Papa for thirty years. He's in the front hall. He walked in and asked for you by name."

The old man sat on a bench in the front hall with his cap in both hands.

His eyes were red, and he did not stand.

"I told them the hour," he said. "A man came to my house and said the girl was the end of this family."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Pawn from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.