Chapter 20: Nothing Left to Burn

The Commission's physician reached my sister first and put his ear to her chest.

"She's breathing," he said. "Barely. Get her to a hospital now, and I mean a real one."

Ruggiero was already on the phone.

"Doctor, it's me," he said. "Yes, tonight. The Albertini girl, heart failure, and I need her listed at the top."

He listened.

"No. There's no Albertini hand on it anymore. I'll sign for everything."

Four of his men lifted Costanza onto a tablecloth and carried her out.

My mother walked beside them and held my sister's hand the whole way down the steps.

She did not look back at my father.

He was still at the head of the table with the capos around him.

Nobody spoke to him. Nobody touched him.

Two of the old doorman's men took his ring off the cloth and put it in a pocket.

I rode behind the ambulance with Ruggiero.

At the hospital, a gray-haired surgeon met us at the door.

Costanza went on a machine in the cardiac ward.

"Her heart is badly worn," the surgeon told me, "but she's young."

He checked a chart.

"I'll list her as urgent. A real match, a real donor, on the registry. Days, not weeks."

"Days," I said.

"I have never lied to a family," he said. "I'm not going to start with you."

My mother stayed in the chair beside the bed.

I stood in the doorway and looked at the number over my sister's head.

It was shaking.

Then it climbed and steadied at 31, where it had stood before tonight.

She was not safe, but she was going to live through the night.

Ruggiero took me home at dawn.

He put his coat over my shoulders and walked me up the stairs.

In our bedroom, he opened the small safe behind the bookcase and took out a folded paper.

I knew the handwriting.

It was the page he had written out by hand the first night, with our terms in a list.

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