Chapter 6: The Hall

On Friday at ten o'clock I walked into the great hall on Hill Street alone.

Corrado had stopped the car at the gate.

"If I walk in with you, this is about me," he'd said.

"I want it to be about what they did to you."

"Then don't let anyone stop you from talking."

The hall had a ceiling forty feet high and a table long enough to seat sixty.

Every seat was taken.

The heads of the five families sat down both sides, in black, with their sons behind them.

At the far end, under the Cardinale crest, my father waited in his carved chair.

Ines sat on his right with her hands in her lap.

On his left sat Fiorella, in my emerald.

Tancredi stood behind my sister, and his father, the underboss, stood beside him.

The black dress I wore was the cook's niece's, taken in at the waist with pins.

I walked the whole length of the room with every eye on me and every man leaning back to watch.

My father didn't rise.

"You came," he said.

"I did," I said.

"Good."

He put a single sheet of paper on the table and slid a gold pen beside it.

"It's a simple release," he said.

"You give up the name Cardinale, and any claim on this house, its property, or anything else in Brogary."

"It's a kindness, Emanuela."

"The families will witness it, and then you may go where you like."

I didn't pick up the pen.

"May I say something first?"

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