Chapter 6: Twelve Captains

By nine o'clock the Greco long table had twelve captains at it and no breakfast.

Agnese's driver had told Domenico's man, and Domenico's man told me over eggs I did not eat.

"You don't have to walk in there," Domenico said at the kitchen door.

"I do. I wrote the lock."

"Then I'll drive you to the gate."

"To the gate," I said. "Not one step past it, Domenico. If you walk in with me it's a Santangelo takeover, and they'll shoot you."

He looked at the canvas bag on my shoulder.

"And if they shoot you?"

"They won't. Not today."

I walked up the gravel drive alone with the keys at my waist and one ledger under my arm.

Two of Daniele's guards stepped aside to let me through the front door.

Neither of them knew what else to do.

The dining room was loud with men until they saw me, and then they all stopped at once.

Daniele sat at the head of the table with his sleeves pushed up.

Genevieve sat beside him in a gray suit, with the signet ring on its chain at her collar.

Agnese was in the second chair with her cane across her knees.

A phone lay in the middle of the white cloth, on speaker, and a man's voice from it said, "It won't open, boss. Eleven of twelve."

"Hoboken?" Daniele said.

"Hoboken, Jersey City, both Brooklyn houses, the Bronx. Nothing opens without the sentence."

"What sentence?" Daniele said.

I put the ledger on the table.

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