of many years of dead reeds, and made himself a little hollow to sit in. He reckoned it would do well enough; he hunched down into the hollow, hugged his knees to his chest, and settled down to the unpleasant task of confronting everything he wanted to avoid thinking about.
Take it one step at a time—
All this time, he’d been casually saying to himself: “Caesare will kill me for this.” Looking at the mess he’d made of things in the cold light of dawn, and soberly recollecting his own lecture to Benito—might he?
He might, Marco thought reluctantly. And be justified. If Casa Dorma take offense . . . he could hand Petro Dorma my head, and get himself out of it. I’ve made myself into a pretty expensive liability.
But would he? Marco looked at it from all the angles he could think of, and finally decided that he probably wouldn’t. Aldanto never did get that drastic without having several reasons for doing it. To be brutally frank, Aldanto was too much of a professional to waste anything, even the time and effort it would take to dispose of a stupid child.
And Maria would probably get upset if Aldanto actually killed Marco. For