Chapter 21: What the Table Did

Vivi's POV

A longshoreman put a gray wool blanket around my shoulders, and I did not remember asking for it.

I sat on a bollard at the edge of the slip with harbor water running out of my hair.

Cassio sat on the concrete beside me with his shirt open and his side bleeding through two folded jackets.

He would not let the paramedics near him until I told him to.

"Let them," I said.

"After."

"Now, Cassio."

He let them, with a look I decided to overlook.

The six heads of the families came down the slip together, the old man with his cane at the front.

Behind them, two of Mancuso's men held Edoardo by the arms.

They had pulled him from the launch dripping to the knees.

His good suit was ruined, and his hair hung in his eyes.

The old man stopped in front of me.

"Viviana Lanzetta," he said. "Are you hurt?"

"I swallowed some of the harbor."

"Then you have an account to settle with the Mancuso family, and the table will see you paid."

He turned.

"Edoardo. You were summoned to this table four times in a year, and you declined each time."

"I was busy," Edoardo said.

His voice was hoarse where her elbow had caught his throat.

"You fired on a Don in Lugano without leave. You sent armed men onto Lanzetta docks."

He paused.

"You took a woman at gunpoint from your own hall in front of forty of your own people."

"She vetoed my lease. She had no right."

"She had every right. I returned it to her."

The old man leaned on his cane.

"Does any man of the Mancuso house say this is untrue?"

Nobody answered.

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