Chapter 4: Wednesday Dinner

I hit send and lay there holding the phone.

Nothing came back.

At one in the morning it buzzed once.

Noted. Tell no one else.

When I looked out the window at six, the car across the street was gone.

A text from Lucio's real number was waiting on my real phone.

Business out of town today. Don't leave the Hill. Dinner at the house at seven, Rhonda's orders.

It was the first day in three that nobody held my ladder.

I worked the whole morning with my back to the door anyway.

At seven I walked up the Hill to the big brick house with the walled garden.

The dining room smelled like Sunday gravy on a Wednesday.

My mother had set the table for six with the good gold-rimmed plates.

Ugo sat at the far end in a brown cardigan, already into the wine.

He was the old Don's younger brother, and he'd been underboss through two Dons now.

He looked at the empty chair at the head of the table.

"Where's my nephew?"

"Business," my mother said.

"Business." Ugo tasted the word. "Seven days before the surgery. Business."

Leni sat across from me in a sweatshirt three sizes too big.

She pushed a meatball around her plate.

She wasn't allowed most of what was on the table.

She ate bread and glared at all of us.

Lucio came in at half past eight.

His suit was the same charcoal as yesterday.

His face was gray under the beard.

Everybody at the table went quiet when he sat.

Ugo raised his glass an inch.

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