Mafia Princess Returns novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Table

The Ferrara club sat on Richmond Avenue behind a dry cleaner's, and its back room had no windows.

Nine men sat at a long oak table under a painting of Saint Michael.

My father had the head, with his rosary beside his water glass.

Piero sat three chairs down, in a fresh suit, with the bandage gone and a thin red line at his temple.

Old Barbieri sat across from him as a guest, with his gray cardigan and a cup of tea he did not drink.

Enrico stood at the foot of the table with his hands at his sides.

I stood beside him.

"This is a Table," said the man on my father's right, a heavy man with a white mustache and a cane.

"Women do not speak at it."

"Then I won't speak," I said. "I'll sit."

I walked up the left side of the room and pulled out the empty chair beside the oldest man there.

He was past eighty, small and withered, with a hearing aid and hooded eyes, and he had been a capo when my grandfather was alive.

He looked at the chair, at me, and at my father.

"That's the chair for the one who speaks for the accused," he said. "Does the accused ask for a voice?"

Everyone looked at Enrico.

"I ask for my sister," said Enrico.

A murmur ran around the table.

My father's face did not change, but his thumb stopped on the beads.

The oldest capo nodded slowly.

"The rule says a man may ask for a voice," he said. "It does not say whose."

I sat down.

My legs were shaking and I put my hands on my knees where nobody could see.

"Enrico Ferrara is charged with taking nine hundred thousand dollars from the Narrows pier take," said the man with the mustache.

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