Chapter 12: The Head of the Table

I took my father's chair at the head of the table in front of the entire family.

It was Sunday dinner in Bay Ridge.

The dining room smelled of braised beef and candle wax, as it had every Sunday of my life.

I had not been invited. The man on the corner had been the invitation.

Leandro walked in behind me and stopped at my shoulder.

Father looked up from the carving knife.

"Get that driver out of my house."

"He works for me," I said. "Sit down, Father."

Nobody sat.

Mother had one hand pressed to her throat. Gaetano's fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

Three of my grandfather's old captains sat at the foot of the table.

They were grey men in dark suits who had eaten here for forty years, and they did not look at Father.

They looked at the cream envelope in my hand.

"What is that?" Father said.

"Grandfather's letter."

His face did not change.

That was how I knew he had been waiting for this for three years.

I laid the pages flat on the white cloth.

"He wrote that I am the head of this family."

"He wrote that you burned the real will and read a false one to the lawyer."

"And he wrote that Leandro kept the other copy."

"That is a forgery," Father said. "Your grandfather was ill at the end. He didn't know what he wrote."

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