The Don's Empire

Forty-three minutes. That is how late she is to the table where men are made, and every one of those minutes is a decision somebody in that room is making about her. The Feast presses against every window of the private dining room. Accordion wheeze and frying dough and a thousand voices tangled in the August heat. Dante Rossi keeps his back to the glass and his eyes on the empty chair at the far end. Angelo mops his forehead with a handkerchief the size of a dinner napkin. *Traffic*, he says, for the fourth time. *You know how it gets during the Feast.* *Of course.* Dante smiles the smile his father taught him. Lips only, nothing behind the eyes. *The saint demands his due.* The room smells of garlic and cologne that is trying very hard to be sandalwood. Carlo sits on his left, gold pinky ring catching the chandelier every time he reaches for his wine, the ruby winking like a wet eye. Marco has positioned himself near the door with his glasses low on his nose and a cigarillo tucked behind one ear. When Elena finally arrives, she gives them a name. It is not her name. What follows: a safe room with secrets in the walls, a bloodline that is scheduled to end on a Friday, confidences exchanged dockside, a sister's escape, a feast where every rule gets broken, deception served with the second course, and a confession made in a warehouse with the doors open. *I'm sitting in a room with two FBI agents who think I'm a traitor and a liar. They're not wrong about the second part.* *I'm not. But he doesn't know that yet.* Will what the two of them built between the pier and the warehouse hold once her real name is entered into a federal record? Or does Dante do the arithmetic his father taught him, protect the table, and let her walk out of the city under somebody else's protection?