Chapter 5: The Table

The dinner was in the back room of a steakhouse on Erie Boulevard that had closed for the night.

Twelve men sat at a long table under a low brass lamp.

The oldest of them, a bald man with a cane hooked on his chair, sat at the head and did not touch the bread.

I sat at Dominic's right hand in a black dress that fit me.

Across from us, with his napkin tucked into his collar, sat Aldo Pellegrino.

He was fifty-five, heavy, with hair the color of dirty snow.

His smile was friendly in a way that made me want to count my fingers.

"Gentlemen," the bald man said.

"The seat was his father's, and the son has a claim, but the table requires a wife by midnight."

"I have one," Dominic said.

Every head turned to me.

"Her name is Pamela," he said.

"She's the daughter of a bus mechanic from the south side of this city, and she married me yesterday at ten past two."

"And I'll tell you what happened at twenty past," Aldo said.

He put down his fork.

"A county clerk's office, a crowd of people, and a girl whose boyfriend left her for a politician's daughter."

"I have it on a phone," he said, and held it up.

There I was on the little screen, tearing paper into quarters.

The men at the table were watching me, and a few of them were not hiding their smiles.

"A leftover," Aldo said gently.

"The clerk's leftover, scooped up in the doorway by a man in a hurry."

"You'll forgive me, Dominic, if the table asks whether a marriage at that price is a marriage at all."

The room waited.

Dominic's hand had gone flat on the tablecloth.

I put mine over it.

"Mr. Pellegrino," I said.

"You're right, I was left."

"Seven years, and I found out in front of thirty strangers."

"And then I walked out, and your phone caught every second."

I smiled at him, small and level.

"I think you should keep that video."

"It's the only record of the afternoon you lost."

Someone at the far end of the table laughed once and turned it into a cough.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Don's Fatal Tenderness from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.