Chapter 9: The Brancato Table

"Then he made his choice," I said into the phone, and I hung up before my voice could say anything else.

I sat with my hands flat on the table until the shaking stopped.

At nine, Alessia came downstairs in her brace and ate cereal at the counter with her left hand.

"Are you going somewhere?" she said.

"Yes."

"Is it about Jared?"

"It's about all of them."

"Good," she said. "Take my phone. If you see Sasha, don't say anything. Just look at her."

I kissed the top of her head, and two of Dario's men took up their places in the hall.

At noon his black sedan took me up the hill.

I had not been up that road since the night I left, and I watched the old stone gateposts come toward me.

The Brancato house looked the same.

The same grey stone, the same iron gate, and the same lemon trees in tubs on the terrace.

Dario walked me through the front door without a word.

He had never been a man who talked when he was moving.

My father's study was at the back of the house, behind a double door of dark oak.

I stopped on the threshold.

The room smelled of cigar smoke and leather polish, exactly as I remembered it.

The big desk stood in front of the window, and behind it was my father's chair.

It was empty.

It was clean, and the leather had been oiled so recently that it shone.

"Seventeen years," I said.

"I've had it re-covered twice."

"Why?"

"Because it was yours," Dario said. "When you left, your father's men wanted to give it to his brother. I said no."

"They agreed?"

"I made them agree."

I walked around the desk and put my hand on the back of the chair.

Another chair, smaller and plainer, stood against the wall a few steps away.

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