Chapter 22: The Seat

Livia's POV

The old capo's doctor was a heavy man who smelled of peppermint.

He came through the club's front door at a run.

I knelt on the boards with both hands pressed over Rocco's side, and I refused to move them.

"Signora, let me see."

"He's breathing."

"Yes. Let me see."

He pushed my hands gently away, cut the shirt, looked, and breathed out through his nose.

"It missed the lung and the gut," he said. "It's long, and it's clean. He's lost a great deal of blood. He will hate me by Friday."

"Will he live?"

"He is too stubborn not to."

Two paramedics lifted him onto a stretcher.

His eyes opened for a moment as they went through the door. They found me.

"Chair," he mouthed.

"What?"

"The chair. Go."

I stood in the doorway of the back room and watched the ambulance pull out into the pink morning.

Then I turned around.

The family heads stood in the long room among the broken glass.

The masked men knelt in a row against the wall with their hands on their heads.

Five of the capos still held their guns.

Silvio stood in the center, with the old capo's man on either side of him.

I walked the length of the table.

The chair at the head had a bullet hole through its back, level with where a man's heart would be.

It was my father's chair.

I pulled it out and sat down.

Nobody spoke.

I laid the crumpled petition on the oak and flattened it with my palm.

I tore it in half, and then in half again.

The pieces fell into the wine someone had spilled.

"I am Livia Corsetti Danieli," I said. "The daughter of the man whose chair this is."

I put my hand on the wood.

"And the wife of a made man who stood behind me for six years without once asking me for anything."

I looked down the table at each face.

"You heard my uncle's pledge this morning. You heard how he broke it."

I let that sit.

"You heard where he sent his people, and who stood over my father's grave."

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