Chapter 7: The Old Rule

I didn't wait for Rocco to explain the summons.

By nine o'clock I was on Grand Avenue, standing in front of a bakery with its shutters down.

Above it, up a flight of stairs that smelled of coffee and floor wax, was the council room.

Sandro had followed me out of the shop and stood on the pavement with his hands in his windbreaker.

"Term three," I told him. "Nobody follows me."

"The Don said to keep you in sight, Donna."

"Then keep me in sight from the pavement."

He sighed and stayed on the pavement.

I went up alone with the brass key sitting warm against my skin, where I had pinned it to the inside of my bra.

The room was long and low, with a table down the middle and a wall of framed photographs of dead men.

Three old capos sat at one end drinking espresso.

They stopped talking when I came in.

"Donna Brandolini," said the oldest, a heavy man with a mustache. "You shouldn't be here. This room is for the council."

"Then it's for me," I said. "I'm the person the council voted on."

Nobody answered.

I put the summons on the table.

"It says I'm a witness at the rite," I said. "A witness to what?"

I looked down the table at them.

"I want to read the rule my husband's grandfather wrote. All of it, not the part someone announced over lamb."

"It's not for women to read," said the old man.

"I know. I've been married to this family for five years."

I pointed at the shelf behind him.

"I've mended the bindings on half those books. Which one is it?"

The oldest capo looked at the other two.

The youngest of them, a thin man with glasses, sighed and took a black leather book down from the shelf.

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