Seven Days Before the Mafia Princess Died novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Bread and Salt

At the family table Ciro invokes the old guest law, and the Don gives them seven days.

The long table in my father's dining room sat twelve, and that Sunday it held five.

My father was at the head, with the carving knife in front of him and a roast he hadn't cut.

My mother sat at his right in black, her back very straight.

Carlo was across from her.

Bianca had the chair next to mine, because she always did, and she had already poured me water.

"Sera, you're so pale," she said softly. "Sit. Please. Eat something."

She meant it, I think.

That was the part I could never get past, that she nearly always meant it.

Nobody had said a word about the man standing at my shoulder.

My father had looked at him once when we came in, from the head of the table, and gone on looking.

"You brought a guest," he said at last.

"My fiance," I said. "I told the guards."

"Sit down, then, Serafina. Your mother has been waiting since six."

I sat.

Ciro did not.

"Thank you for having me," he said. "My name is Ciro Landi."

The roast knife stopped in the air.

Carlo came out of his chair so fast it went over behind him.

I heard the click before I saw the gun, a short black pistol pointed at Ciro's face from six feet away.

"Landi died with his whole house," Carlo said. "Who sent you? Who put that name in your mouth?"

"Nobody sent me," Ciro said. "I was invited."

"By who?"

"By your sister."

Every head turned to me.

I put my hands flat on the white tablecloth, because they were shaking, and I wanted my father to see that I wasn't hiding it.

"I invited him," I said. "I'm dying, Papa."

Nobody moved.

"I'm dying," I said again, louder. "I have a week, or ten days. I held the report out at the cemetery, and it fell in the dog's grave. I have a copy in my bag."

"Sera," my mother said.

"I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm telling you what happens at this table for the next seven days. He sits here. He eats what I eat. And all of you look at me."

My father's face did not change.

"You'll hold your tongue," he said. "In front of a Landi."

"Why?" Ciro said. "I'm a guest."

He reached across the cloth, so close that Carlo's gun followed his hand, and took the bread from the basket.

He broke it in half.

He took the silver salt cellar from beside my father's elbow, sprinkled both halves, and ate one.

Then he put the other half on my plate.

My mother drew a breath, and I saw her hands go still on her napkin.

My father looked at the bread on my plate for a long time.

"Bread and salt," he said.

"At your table," said Ciro. "In your house."

"Where did a Landi learn that?"

"From the same man who taught you. Your own father wrote it into the rules of the five families." Ciro folded his hands. "A guest who has eaten at your table is yours to feed and nobody's to harm, for seven days."

Carlo's gun was still up.

"Put it down, Carlo," my father said without turning his head.

"Papa, he's a Landi."

"I know what he is."

Carlo lowered the pistol, and the muscle in his jaw jumped.

Bianca reached over and touched my wrist, very lightly.

"Sera," she said, and I could hear that her voice was shaking, "please don't do this to Mamma. Whatever this is, it isn't fair to her."

"It's the fairest thing I've done all year," I said.

She laughed, once, a small gentle laugh that sounded like she was trying to be kind about it.

"You've always been so dramatic, sweetheart."

Beside me, Ciro had gone very still.

I felt it.

He was looking at Bianca's throat, at the little bird on its chain.

"Enough," said my mother.

Her voice cracked across the table, and everyone stopped.

She was looking at me, not at Ciro.

She was looking at my cuff.

There was a brown stain on it, dried, from the blood in the paper bag.

Her fingers moved on her napkin and stilled again.

"Enough," she said, more quietly. "Eat."

I picked up the half slice of bread Ciro had given me.

I took one bite, and my stomach rolled, and I kept it down.

Ciro sat beside me and cut the roast on my plate into pieces the size of coins, and he did it without a word.

My father watched him do it.

Then my father stood and set the carving knife down across his plate.

He was a tall man, still, and he looked down the long table at the man who had eaten his bread.

"Seven days," he said. "The law is the law, and I keep it."

He leaned on his knuckles.

"And on the eighth day, I bury the two of you in that cemetery."

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