Chapter 7: Paid in Bread

A paper the size of a dinner plate was nailed to Teresa's bakery door.

Under it stood a man in a grey suit, with a briefcase and a clipboard, reading aloud to a street full of neighbors.

"Forty-one thousand euros in unpaid rent, plus penalties. The tenant has until Friday to pay, or the premises will be cleared."

"Forty-one thousand?" Teresa came out of the doorway in her flour-covered apron.

"I pay four hundred a month!"

"Not according to the owner's books, signora."

"The owner is Domenico Montanari," I said.

The man in the grey suit turned.

He was young and sweaty, and he did not like seeing me.

"Signorina Esposito. I'm only the clerk."

"Then read the books to the street," I said. "Every month, from the first one."

"I don't have to..."

"Read them."

The street had gone very quiet.

An old woman in the front row folded her arms.

I recognized her.

She was the one who had walked up the hill with two rolls in her pocket.

"He doesn't know how," she said. "He's never paid rent in his life."

The crowd laughed.

The clerk went red to the ears.

A car door shut behind me.

Alessio came across the cobbles in a dark suit, with a bodyguard carrying a leather case.

The crowd went quiet in a different way.

They knew his face.

Most of them had spent their whole lives knowing it, and never saying it.

"Forty-one thousand," he said to the clerk.

"Don Ruffo, I only..."

"Is it forty-one thousand?"

"Forty-one thousand, two hundred and ten, with penalties."

Alessio nodded at his man.

The bodyguard opened the case and counted out stacks of cash onto the hood of the car.

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