Chapter 9: The Table

The back room of the restaurant held one long table, nine chairs, and a smell of garlic that no one noticed anymore.

Five capos sat on one side.

Aurelio sat at the head, in his cardigan, with a glass of red wine.

Fabrizio sat at the far end with his hand in a clean white splint and a bruise coming up under one eye from the night before.

He had not looked at Wynne since she walked in.

Massimo stood beside her chair and did not sit.

"The woman asks the table," the oldest capo said. He was the one with the broken ears. "Under the code. Say it, girl."

Wynne stood up.

Her knees were weak.

She put her left hand flat on the table with the sleeve pushed back, so every man could see the bruise.

"On Friday night at eleven, in the pantry hall of the house, Fabrizio took my wrist," she said.

"He twisted it until I said I would think about marrying him."

She turned the arm over.

"This is what it looks like on Tuesday."

Somebody coughed.

"It's a bruise," Fabrizio said. "She bruises like a peach, her mother said so."

"Her mother is here," Aurelio said gently. "Rosanna, dear."

Her mother sat at the end of the table beside the wall, in the pastel cardigan, with her hands folded.

"Did you see it happen?" the oldest capo asked her.

"No."

"Did you see the mark on Sunday?"

"I saw a bruise." Rosanna's voice was very small. "I don't know how she got it."

Wynne felt that one land.

She did not look at her mother.

"Who saw it?" the old capo said. "That's the law, girl. A man may not be put out for a woman's word. Who saw?"

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