Chapter 10: On My Knees at the Council Table

Elsa arrived at seven with a garment bag over her arm and a smile for everyone.

"I won't have her go in there in a nightgown," she told Sergio. "Out, both of you."

They went, though Marco looked back from the door.

Elsa hung the bag on my wardrobe and unzipped it.

Inside was a plain black dress with a high neck and long sleeves, severe and modest.

"The old men like to see a girl covered," she said. "Under it, wear what they gave you."

She touched the gold ring at my throat with one fingertip.

"Did you pick this yourself?"

"Yes."

"Good. They're proud of you, you know. Even if they're clumsy about it."

She helped me with the zipper, and I did not feel watched.

When she fastened the last button, she looked at me in the mirror for a moment, and I thought her eyes were wet.

"You do look like her," she said, and left before I could ask.

The council sat in the long dining room with the curtains drawn.

Ten old men in dark suits around the great table, each with a glass and a folder, and none of them spoke as I came in.

They stood.

All of them, even the one in the wheelchair, who pressed himself up on shaking arms.

I stopped in the doorway.

It was the same as at the birthday dinner, except now I was the only woman in the room, and they all looked at my collar.

Sergio rose at the head of the table.

"Sit," he told them, and they sat.

He turned to me, and his face was the one he wore for business.

"Élise. Beside me."

His chair stood at the head of the table, and next to it lay a flat black cushion on the floor.

I looked at it.

I looked at him.

"Only if you want to," he said, so low that nobody else could hear it. "Say no and you sit in a chair, and nobody here will say a word."

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