Chapter 25: She Decides

Glass cracked under a boot at the broken doors.

Every rifle in the hall left my sister and turned toward the sound.

Gaspare walked in alone.

He wore his dark coat, and both his hands hung open at his sides.

He came the whole length of the hall without hurrying, through the burnt chairs, and stopped at the end of the white cloth.

"I said alone," Ficarra said.

"I am."

"Your men?"

"Outside the north gate. Forty of them. They'll come in if I don't walk out."

"Then your wife's sister dies first."

"Perhaps."

Gaspare took the pistol from under his coat, slowly, and set it on the cloth beside mine.

Two guns with two sets of letters, side by side between the candles.

"I didn't come to take her back," he said. "I came to hear what my wife decides."

Ficarra's smile came back.

"You give a Don's judgment to a woman?"

"I give it to the one person at this table you can't say a lie to. She has already heard all of them."

I stood up.

My knees were not steady, so I put my right hand on the cloth and let the table hold me.

"Sit down, Tindaro," I said.

Nobody called him that.

He sat.

I think he was more surprised than I was.

"Your wife was shot by my sister on purpose," I said. "You've heard it said aloud, and it's true, and you have every right to hate her for it."

"I do."

"You also sent thirty men to my banquet. Nine of them died at the north gate, and two waiters died in the hall, who had never heard your name."

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