Chapter 12: The Family Dinner

The invitation arrived by courier at noon.

It was a cream card in my father's own handwriting.

"Family dinner, eight o'clock."

"Come alone, or the man in the cellar goes in the harbor."

I drove the cook's old van up Hill Street at five to eight.

I wore a black dress with my hair pinned, and I left the van by the front steps.

One of the young men wanted to come.

I told him no, and I made him swear to keep the others at Pier Four.

The butler took my coat as if it were any other Sunday.

The long dining room blazed with candles.

My mother sat at the foot of the table in a grey silk dress.

My father sat at the head.

Fiorella was on his right, with Tancredi beside her.

On her left hand sat a three-carat diamond I knew very well.

Across from them sat his father, the underboss, a bull-necked man with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

Nobody had set a place for me.

"Emanuela," Ines said.

Her eyes were red.

She didn't say anything else.

"Where is he?" I asked.

"Downstairs," my father said.

"Unharmed, so far."

"Sit."

"I'll stand."

I put a single sheet of paper on the white tablecloth.

It was a clean typed list, forty-one lines long.

I'd written it out from memory in the van's passenger seat.

"I'm going to read you something," I said.

"It'll take about two minutes."

Tancredi laughed.

"Is this about the forger again?"

"The forger's tape is in the hands of the council," I said.

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