Chapter One The Bar

"Then you come back." Vito laughed, shoved him into the snow in front of the block, and threw a twenty-dollar bill onto his chest. "Buy a coat. Sons of dead men freeze easy." Nobody spoke. Ethan lay in the slush with his palm pressed into the ice water. He memorized every pair of shoes, the M on Vito's ring, and the light sound of money landing on top of a blood debt. He did not curse. He did not charge forward to die. That night he put the twenty-dollar bill beneath his father's photograph and began counting. He found that his father had paid the Morettis three thousand a month, a local lender eighteen hundred in interest, and a detective's charity fund five hundred. The bar had not been killed by a bullet.