Chapter 6: The Gate

Seven weeks into the marriage, I threw up in the Ferraro downstairs powder room before breakfast.

I sat on the cold marble floor afterward with my cheek against the wall and counted backward.

Then I counted again.

When I came out, Dominic was standing in the hall in his shirtsleeves with a coffee for me that I couldn't smell.

"You're pale," he said.

"I'm fine."

"You're not."

"I'll tell you tonight," I said, and he frowned and let it go.

The house in Westchester had twenty-two rooms and a stone wall around it, and I still got lost on the way to the kitchen.

Dominic's consigliere was waiting at the dining table with a man I hadn't met, a broad, gray-faced capo who had been up all night.

"Say it," Dominic said to him.

"The warehouse in Newburgh," the capo said.

"Aldo's people hit it at four."

"Two of our drivers, both dead."

"They were putting the trucks away, nothing more."

I stopped in the doorway with the coffee still in my hand.

"We answer tonight," the capo said.

"The whole east side of the river, every bar he owns, every truck."

"If we wait, he thinks we're soft."

Dominic did not say anything.

His hand lay flat on the table, and I saw his thumb press white against the wood.

"Dominic," the consigliere said.

"I'm thinking."

"There are forty men on that side of the river who've never done anything to you."

"They work for him."

"They work for whoever pays them," Dominic said.

Nobody spoke.

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