Chapter 22: The Last Pew

Nerina's POV

Six weeks after the transplant, I stood on the steps of the church on Halsted Street in my wedding dress.

The guests were coming up the stone stairs in twos and threes.

They were Falsetti men in good suits, and their wives.

Four of the capos who had put their hands on the table came too.

The old doorman had come in a wheelchair, with a blanket over his knees.

Ruggiero stood three steps above me, looking down at me.

"You're staring," I said.

"I'm allowed."

"The photographer is here."

"Let him photograph this."

I laughed, and my chest hurt in a good way.

Then a long black car stopped at the foot of the stairs.

Nobody had sent it.

Two people got out of the back seat, and the whole street went quiet.

My father wore a plain gray coat, with no ring on his hand.

My mother walked half a step behind him in a dark dress, with her head bowed.

Ettore Albertini had been a don for thirty years.

He had lost his seat, his men, his house and his name in a single night.

He came up the steps slowly, one at a time.

Ruggiero's captain moved to meet him, and I put up my hand.

"Let him come."

My father stopped three steps below me.

He looked at the dress.

He looked at the stone arch behind me, with the carved vines and the doves I had drawn at twenty.

"They finished it," he said.

"They finished it."

"It is beautiful."

I said nothing.

"I did not come to ask for a place in your Family," he said. "I know I have none."

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