Chapter 17: Ten Minutes

Ruggiero's POV

My wife stood in the kitchen at four in the morning in my coat, with a bandage on her arm.

She told me she was coming in the front door.

"He said alone," I said.

"He said alone because he wants me in front of the room."

"Then I go first."

"No."

"Nerina."

She put her hand flat on my chest, where she always put it.

"Ten minutes," she said. "You go through the cellar and find where she is."

"And you?"

"I wait in the car at the gate. After ten minutes I walk in the front."

"And if I try to stop you?"

"Then I walk in over you."

I had been the don of this Family for fourteen years, and nobody had ever bargained with me in my own kitchen.

"Ten minutes," I said.

She kissed me hard, once.

I drove her to the Albertini gate myself.

I left her in the back seat with my captain and my pistol in her lap.

The lane behind the house was still dark.

The cellar door stood open.

Somebody had dragged the dead men away, but nobody had mopped, and the wine had dried black on the stones.

I went up the back stairs in my socks.

The dining room had two doors.

One opened on the front hall.

The other opened on the butler's pantry, where the serving trays were kept.

I stood in the pantry with the door open one inch.

The capos had come back, because nobody had slept.

They sat down both sides of the long table, a dozen men with gray faces.

The old doorman sat at the foot with his cane across his knees.

A steel tin lay on the cloth in front of him.

The Commission's physician sat beside it, an old man in glasses, reading one page after another.

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