Chapter 18: Sunday Table

The Ferraro Sunday table seats thirty, and every chair was full when I walked in.

The heads of the four allied houses sat along the left side, with their wives in black silk.

The captains who had kept their pins sat on the right.

At the head of the table, in the carved chair that had been Dominic's father's, sat the underboss, with a glass of red wine in his hand.

Rosaria sat at the foot with her back as straight as a nail.

The soup had just been served.

Nobody was eating it.

"Mrs. Ferraro," the underboss said pleasantly, over the rim of his glass. "You're back early from your funeral."

"Donna Sorrentino," I said.

"I was telling our friends you'd decided to stay in Naples. To grieve in private. It's very touching."

"He's sitting in my father-in-law's chair," Rosaria said to the table. "Remember that. Someone mark where he's sitting."

Dominic came in behind me and stood at my shoulder with a pillowcase in his hand.

I didn't speak to him, and he didn't speak to me.

I walked the length of the table and laid out what we had brought.

The black notebook with its silver chain.

The map, with the third curve circled in red.

Two brass casings, each with a small F stamped in the base, which Nico's men had picked out of the grass above the Amalfi road.

"My parents were run off a mountain nine days before I buried them," I said. "Everyone at this table has heard the word accident. It wasn't one."

A woman on the left put down her spoon.

"The woman who fired on my father's car is in my cellar tonight," I said. "And she has named the man who sent her."

Gasps went around the room.

Several of the allied heads looked at the underboss.

He did not move.

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