Chapter 21: The Fall

I took the microphone.

My hand was steady, and that surprised me.

I stood, and the box with the crown in it slid off my lap.

I caught it against my hip.

Three hundred faces looked up at me.

"I was in Lisbon," I said.

The speakers carried it to the corners of the room.

"For twelve years. I sat at the front desk of a small hotel, and every night I looked at four photographs."

I let that stand.

"I was not there because I ran. I was there because my husband ordered me killed."

Nobody in the room made a sound.

"A man at that table in the corner was told to do it," I said.

"He was told to take me to the river. He put me on a plane."

Every head turned.

Ruggero stood up.

He did not say a word.

He lifted his left hand into the light of the chandeliers.

It was bare, with the knuckles flattened and two fingers lying wrong.

A white hammer scar ran across the back.

"My husband broke that for it," I said.

"Then he told this city I had left with Ruggero Lombardi, so nobody would ever look for a dead woman."

Silence.

Then, near the front, one of the old capos spoke in a rough voice.

"I remember that week. Ruggero couldn't hold a glass."

The room started to murmur.

"Lies," Bianca said, and the tears came. "Cesare, listen to what she's saying about your father."

"I am listening," Cesare said.

He stood up beside me.

I held the microphone out to him.

"My mother never wrote the note I kept for twelve years," he said. "Tommaso."

Tommaso walked around the table with a brown sheet in his hand.

He held it up to the chandeliers, and the pressed lines showed pale on the brown.