Chapter 6: One Question Each

I took the pot from Fiamma and told her the soup smelled wonderful.

Then I told her to go home, because I had a meeting at noon the next day and needed to sleep.

She hugged me again at the door.

I let her.

The next day at noon the club was full again.

All seventeen captains had come, the ones I was counting on and the ones I wasn't.

Ilario stood at my right shoulder with his bandaged hand folded over the other one.

Nunzio sat at the end of the long table, pale and clean-shaven, with his hands under his thighs.

The big doors opened, and Ettore walked in with his father behind him.

Fiamma was on his arm.

She wore a black dress and her hair was pinned up neatly, and she wouldn't look at me.

"We're early," Ettore said, smiling at the room. "I thought the family should see something before the real business starts."

Fiamma took out her phone and a captain at the back stood up to connect it to the television the Don used for football games.

The screen lit up with the cemetery.

It showed me at the grave with four pins in my hand.

It showed Ettore saying, "Say something, slow girl," and then it showed me standing there and saying nothing.

The video ran forty seconds of my silence.

Someone had sped it up a little, so my pause looked longer than it had been.

Men at the back began to laugh again, softly.

"This is the girl who wants twelve of you to follow her," Ettore said. "She needs forty seconds to answer a question."

He waited for the laughter to build.