Chapter 14 - WHAT A FATHER DOES
Everything happened at once.
Bastian drew a gun.
Carmine shoved Nell behind a stone column.
A shot cracked through the restaurant.
Glass burst above the bar.
Then voices thundered from the entrances.
“Federal agents! Drop it!”
Nell hit the floor hard.
Her ears rang.
Across the room, Jonah’s chair overturned.
Vittorio tried to drag him toward the kitchen.
The boy kicked backward, catching the edge of a table.
Vittorio lost his grip.
Nell crawled toward him.
Someone shouted her name.
She kept moving.
Jonah was on his side, wrists bound, eyes wide.
“I’ve got you,” she said.
She pulled him behind the counter.
Another sharp report.
Then a heavy crash.
Bastian was down near the kitchen doorway, his weapon beyond his reach.
Officers moved past them.
Vittorio stood at the rear exit with his hands raised.
He was shouting that Carmine had arranged everything.
That he had been threatened.
That he wanted an attorney.
Nell didn’t care.
She was looking for her father.
Carmine sat against the column.
Blood darkened his sleeve.
For one impossible second, she was eleven again.
Smoke in her mouth.
Someone missing.
Too many doors.
She crossed the room.
“Dad?”
The word came out before she could stop it.
Carmine looked up.
Not at the blood.
Not at the agents.
At her.
“I’m here.”
“Don’t move.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
A laugh broke out of her, wild and frightened.
Paramedics knelt beside him.
He tried to lift his uninjured hand.
Nell took it.
His fingers closed around hers.
Across the restaurant, agents led Vittorio past them in handcuffs.
He stopped when he saw Carmine.
“You think she’ll forgive you now?”
Carmine didn’t look at him.
Vittorio’s voice sharpened.
“Tell her about the collections. Tell her about the men who lost their businesses. Tell her everything.”
Carmine held Nell’s gaze.
“I will.”
That silenced his brother.
At the hospital, doctors said the bullet had passed through Carmine’s upper arm.
Painful.
Serious.
Survivable.
Nell sat beside his bed after midnight.
The room smelled of disinfectant and coffee.
“I called you Dad,” she said.
“I heard.”
“It doesn’t fix everything.”
“I know.”
Agent Bell appeared at the door with Mara.
Carmine looked at them.
Then he released Nell’s hand.
“Before we talk about my brother,” he said, “I need to tell you what I did.”
Nell stared at him.
May you like
He was not asking how to keep his empire.
He was preparing to lose it.
