He Chose My Copy I Became The Law Chapter 13
Three more months went by before Cesare summoned me to his personal study.
“I have an assignment. It is filthy work and exceptionally perilous.”
The old man slid a locked folder of black leather across the desk, placing its key alongside it. “Yet nothing the Family has confronted in decades has mattered more. You are free to decline, Valentina. No one would hold it against you.”
I unlocked the file. The heading read: Southern Border, Cinder Bay.
Ortega, a smuggling kingpin, had recently closed his fist around a contraband corridor that crossed three nations.
His people had already slaughtered two delegations dispatched from Porto Aurelia and abandoned their bodies in the desert. Not even their severed heads had been returned.
The Family required someone to travel there personally with enough leverage to secure signatures on a truce.
“I will take the assignment.”
“Consider it carefully.” Cesare regarded me with grave intensity. “Those bandits observe no code. The journey amounts to a death sentence.”
“I already have,” I answered. “My father did not weigh his chances before he left. If he faced it, I have no justification for retreating.”
The evening before I was due to leave, I followed the estate’s long hallway to the old second-floor study.
Cesare was waiting inside. Seated in a worn leather chair beside the hearth, he had draped a dark crimson velvet cloth across his knees. His head was bent as he polished an antique silver pocket chronometer.
Firelight flickered across the gray at his temples.
My father’s painted likeness kept silent vigil from the wall.
“Uncle Cesare.”
Glancing up, he gave me a faint smile and indicated that I should sit. “Have you come to pay your respects?”
“I have.”
Together, we stood at the fireplace and contemplated the portrait of the man who had once dictated the underworld’s laws.
“This is the very pocket chronometer your father took when he entered negotiations with the Six Houses.”
“Every one of us pleaded with him to take his finest gunmen, but he told us, ‘If I arrive armed, they will reach for their weapons. If I stay away, hundreds more corpses will cover the streets before night is over.'”
“He therefore went by himself. With a dozen gun barrels aimed at him, he calmly swallowed the poisoned wine.”
“Keeping his eyes on the second hand of this chronometer, he determined the exact instant the toxin would overwhelm him and compelled those bosses to put their names on the peace accord.”
My eyes began to sting. Cesare extended the newly polished chronometer toward me.
“Valentina.” With solemn care, Cesare set it in my hand and gently closed his weathered fingers over mine. “Return to us safely. Your father will be watching.”
I lowered my gaze, tracing an old, barely visible scratch across the case with my fingertips.
“I will—for him, and for the inviolable laws that govern our world.”Â