Nero: Made Men novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Social Club

The Bellandi social club had a brown door on Stiles Street and no sign.

On Monday afternoon I pushed it open without knocking.

It was a long smoky room with a bar down one wall, a card table, and a faded photo of a ship on the plaster.

Six old men sat around the table with their hats on the chairs beside them.

They all turned their heads at the same moment.

At the end of the table, with a deck of cards in his hands, sat Sal Ferraro.

"Signorina," he said. "This is a private club."

"I know."

"Women don't come in."

"I'm a woman who came in," I said.

One old man at the bar coughed into his fist, and I heard him swallow a laugh.

I walked to the table and put both hands on the back of an empty chair.

"I have a question for the men who decide things," I said. "Who decides if I sit in the front row on the seventh?"

"Don Aldo," Sal said.

"Then who decides what happens to me after?"

The smile slid off his face.

"Nobody decides that," Sal said. "That's the point of a front row."

"You sit. You watch. You learn what kind of man you've been sleeping with."

"What kind is that?"

"One with obligations." He shuffled the deck. "Obligations don't have a girlfriend's name on them."

The men around the table said nothing.

"Mr. Ferraro," I said, "have you ever lost a hand and blamed the cards?"

He put the deck down.

He stood slowly, and he walked around the table until he was close enough that I could smell his cigar.

"Let me explain how this works, little girl," Sal said softly.

"The Don is old, and he is sentimental. He likes your mouth. I do not."

"When the seventh is over, a girl like you goes where girls like you go. A bus. A bridge. A room with no windows."

"It is only business."

My mouth went dry.

I did not step back.

"Is that a threat," I said, "in front of six witnesses?"

"It's a courtesy."

"Then here's mine," I said. "I have a roommate who films everything."

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