Chapter 18: The Five Families

The five families met that night in the back room of an old social club on Federal Hill.

Ottavio had chosen it because it had no windows.

I stood in the doorway beside Santo, and I watched twenty men turn in their chairs and stop talking.

At the head of the long table, in the Don's own seat, sat Ottavio Grasso.

He had been mid-sentence, with one hand raised and a glass in it.

"A woman who claims to be Alessia Barone," he had been saying, "has been seen in my friend's house."

Then he saw me, and the glass tilted in his hand.

"Santo," he said. "Thank God. We were afraid you were hurt."

Santo walked up the room with his arm in its sling and blood dried brown on his shirt.

He did not look at Ottavio.

He looked at the old man at the foot of the table, the oldest of the five heads, who had known his father as a boy.

"I call this table," Santo said. "It's mine to call, and you will all stay in your seats and hear it."

Nobody told him no.

Ottavio laughed gently.

"You're wounded, figlio. Sit down. Whatever's happened, we can sort it."

"I'd rather stand."

I went to the empty chair at the Don's right hand, the one I had sat in for four years.

I pulled it out and sat.

Every man at that table saw me do it.

"Present," I said, to the table.

An old capo crossed himself.

"Santo has one thing to say," I went on. "And then I think someone should play you a recording."

Nadia came through the door behind us.

She had washed her face, and she walked up the room with her chin high and her phone in her fist.

Nobody had ever heard her say a word at that table, and now twenty men watched her put the phone down on the cloth.

"Don't touch it," she said to the man nearest. "I have copies."

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