Chapter 20: The Grave Opens

Lucian's POV

The back room of the restaurant on Staten Island hadn't changed since my father sat in it.

There was one long table, green baize, a crucifix, and eight men who had known me since I was a boy.

Aldo sat at my father's end, where he had no right to sit, with his hands folded.

The door opened at noon.

I walked through it on my own two feet.

Nobody said a word.

One of the capos put his glass down so carefully that it rang.

"Gentlemen," I said. "I'm told I'm dying."

Aldo got to his feet.

"Lucian."

"Sit down, brother. You'll want to be sitting."

Mara came in behind me in a black dress, carrying a folder.

On my left, the big guard brought in a young orderly with a grey face, and on my right he helped a pale woman in a heavy coat to a chair.

Renata could barely keep her head up.

She looked across the table at her husband and he looked at the baize.

The older of the two old men cleared his throat.

"Don Ruggiero," he said. "Aldo says that you are failing, and he asks this table to name him in your place."

"He did say it."

"You do not look like a man who is failing."

"No," I said. "I look like a man who's been given his life back by a woman, in this room, against his brother's wishes."

I nodded to Mara, and she opened the folder.

"The first blood test is from August," she said. "The drug in it is a heart medicine. It is not in any of his prescriptions."

She laid down the paper, and then another.

"These are the tea tins. These are the cups. This is the lab's name, and this is the coffee that was poured for me yesterday."

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