Chapter 4

The phone rang at noon.

I knew it was Carlo before I looked. My father had one phone voice, too smooth and too patient, leaving gaps for you to fall into.

"Serena." He didn't wait for me to answer. "Bellini has announced the engagement to the family. It's public. You're his intended, and everyone in the city knows your face now."

I said nothing.

"A week into the chair," Carlo said, "and you tell all five families that a man they respect isn't good enough for you."

I heard him shift the phone to his other ear.

"He's a proud man, Serena. You've humiliated him without saying a word."

"Then let him be humiliated."

Carlo began to say my name. I hung up.

I got married in a navy skirt and a gray sweater, the best things I owned. I had bought the skirt secondhand for my residency interview. It was still the most I had ever spent on clothes.

The courthouse was a long concrete building with a flag that did not move. Knox had arranged everything. A marriage license in an envelope, two witnesses I never met, a judge in a robe that was too loose at the shoulders.

The staff were nervous. The women behind the counter would not look at him. A man in a security jacket kept his eyes on Knox and his back against the wall.

Nothing new in that. Anyone would be nervous seeing a mafia man in an empty hall on a Tuesday.

The judge read the words from a card. His voice shook a little.

"You may kiss your bride."

I froze. I hadn't thought about the kiss.

He held my eyes, checking whether I would move. Then he leaned in and kissed the corner of my mouth.

He had measured the distance. Half an inch more and it would have counted, and he knew the number as well as I did.

His mouth was warm at the edge of my jaw. He smelled like soap and the inside of a clean coat.

I caught myself learning it. Then he was back to standing, straight, giving me nothing.

Nobody said anything. I kept my eyes on the wall behind him while the lights hummed.

My pulse was in my throat, and only then did I notice that I hadn't moved once, not through any of it.

Before I signed, he laid his hand across the paper. His eyes didn't leave me.

"You can still walk away," he said. "Now. Before it's on the record. I won't force you, and Bellini won't get you from me. If you go, I'll say it was my doing."

I waited for whatever my mother had left me to say something. It stayed quiet.

He hadn't told me a lie. He hadn't told me one true thing about himself.

I signed.

The pen was heavier than it had any right to be. My name was never going to sit the same way on a page again.

Eight years getting out. A life built in a hospital where nobody had heard of Carlo Marino. And I'd put myself back in with my own hand.

Nobody held a gun on me to do it.

Since the message came in, every room I'd stood in, somebody else had picked for me. The hospital. The car downstairs. Bellini.

This one I picked.

It might still be the worst decision of my life. It was mine, and I would have signed it again.

"Come," Knox said. "You'll move into my place until the three months are done. You'll be back at work on Monday. I'll see you there and back."

I stopped with the pen still in my hand.

"I was fired yesterday," I said. "I didn't tell you that."

"No."

"Then how do you know I'm back on Monday?"

He picked up the license and folded it into his coat. He held the door for me and didn't answer.

It was the first thing he had refused me. I put it with the other things about him that didn't fit, and I followed him out.

My things were still in the apartment. I told him I would go back and pack.

We came out the front steps into the light.

Three men in black, crossing the square. Then two more. Their pace held steady when they saw us, and five sets of eyes came to rest on me and Knox.

I knew that walk. Eighteen years a capo's daughter, and twice I'd seen it cross a restaurant. Both times for somebody who didn't come back.

I grabbed Knox's arm and pulled him off the steps. The side door of the courthouse hung open on a hallway of mops and a broken light.

"Go," I said. "Now."

He came the second I pulled.

I could hear the shoulder in his breathing, and the left arm didn't swing the same as the right. Across the street the men had seen us. They picked up their pace.

"If they catch you," I said, "Bellini won't let a stranger take his public engagement and walk. He'll put you in the river and laugh about it. Go."

He took his time about answering. I wanted to shake him.

"Cute."

"Don't joke," I said. "Run."

I pushed him forward and he went. I stuck to his side, gripping his sleeve, matching his stride.

My arm had started to burn from hauling at him. It could burn. He was slow because he was hurt, and I was fast enough for both of us.

His arm stayed loose where I held it, his head level. He counted the men closing in. I watched his eyes go left to right and stop, and that was all he did with them.

He didn't look afraid. I couldn't tell whether that was nerve or habit, and both answers frightened me.

The men were close now, their feet loud on the pavement. I dragged him toward the mouth of an alley.

One of them shouted.

"Sir, please stop!"

Sir.

The word went in and didn't land. Knox stopped, my grip still dragging at his sleeve. The men who'd been closing on us pulled up and waited, arms loose at their sides.

"It's all right," he said. "They're mine."