Chapter 2

The ballroom at Saint Michael's emptied with the quiet discipline of a garrison standing down.

By two in the morning, the floral arches had begun to sag under the heat of two hundred dying candles.

The busboys cleared the crystal flutes, but none of them approached the head table.

That space belonged to the house staff—men and women whose mothers and grandmothers had answered to me long before Vittorio Bellandi had silver in his hair.

I stood by the service doors with my overcoat folded across my arm, watching Mr. Costa supervise the loading of the gift boxes.

For sixteen years, after every major feast, Costa would bring me two things before the first engine turned over in the alley: the master guest register and the small velvet-lined box from the pantry safe.

In that box were never diamonds or cash.

It held the wedding bands left behind by women who had needed three days of silence in my kitchen.

I stepped toward him.

"Costa. Did Maria Moretti leave her parcel?"

Costa froze. He was holding a stack of leather-bound guest folios against his ribs.

His eyes flicked to the left, caught the shadow of two young guards standing near the coat check, and dropped to the scuffed parquet floor.

"Miss Perry took the lockbox keys, Mrs. Bellandi."

The name came out dry. Formal. Like a deposition read in an empty courtroom.

"She took the master ring box?"

"Mr. Bellandi gave the instruction before the toast to the bride," Costa murmured, keeping his voice so low the busboys five feet away couldn't hear the break in it. "He said you were not to carry the burden of the household records tonight. He said your hands were done with the accounts."

A cold draft slipped in through the loading bay, carrying the sharp scent of wet asphalt and idling sedans.

"Maria's husband broke her jaw on Thursday, Costa," I said, my voice level, steady as a plumb line. "She was supposed to put her ring on my counter at midnight so I could hold him off until Father Thomas spoke to his captain. Does Perry know what Maria's ring means?"

Costa swallowed hard. The skin around his collar flushed a dull, guilty red.

"Mr. Bellandi said all family disputes will be logged through the front office at the warehouse on Mondays. He said the informal arrangements are finished."

Informal arrangements.

That was what Whit called sixteen years of keeping his men from killing their wives and each other in their own parlors.

I looked across the darkened ballroom toward the private parlor.

The heavy oak doors were shut tight.

Outside the threshold stood young Leo, one of the Moretti nephews whose bail I had quietly covered eight years ago so his mother wouldn't lose her house.

When Leo saw me coming, his jaw clenched and he stared straight ahead at the plaster wall.

"Mrs. Bellandi," he muttered.

"Step aside, Leo."

He didn't move, but his fingers twitched against the seam of his trousers. "The Don asked for fifteen minutes with Miss Perry. They're reconciling the tributes."

"I was in that room before your father had a crew, Leo," I said softly. "Do not make me ask you twice."

Leo looked down at the floor, exhaled a jagged breath, and pushed the door open just wide enough for me to pass.

The air inside smelled of rich maduro cigar smoke and double-distilled grappa.

Whit sat behind the mahogany partner's desk, his dinner jacket draped over the leather sofa, his white shirt unbuttoned two inches below the throat.

The heavy gold signet ring on his pinky caught the green glow of the banker's lamp as he tapped a stack of manila folders.

Perry sat across from him in the wingback chair, an open ledger perched on her knees and a gold ballpoint pen tucked behind her ear.

Between them on the blotter lay the velvet box. It was open.

Inside were three plain gold bands, each tagged with a date and a surname written in my handwriting.

Neither of them looked surprised.

"Ines," Whit said, leaning back. The leather creaked under his weight. "I told Joe to have the car waiting at the side entrance. You should be in bed."

"You took the box from the pantry safe, Whit."

Perry didn't look up from her papers. Her pen scratched rapidly across the page.

"We're organizing the household archives, Ines. We can't have women walking into the private residence at three in the morning without logging them. The district attorney has grand juries running on the East Side. An unrecorded person in our kitchen is a subpoena waiting to happen."

"Those women do not walk into our kitchen for the district attorney, Perry," I said, walking to the edge of the mahogany desk. "They walk in because for sixteen years, if their ring is on that marble before twelve, no man in this town is permitted to touch them for seventy-two hours."

"And that rule was useful in the old days," Perry replied coolly, finally lifting her chin. Her eyes were sharp, modern, completely devoid of the fear that lived in the parish alleys. "Today, it's a liability. If Frankie Vale beats his wife, it's a domestic charge, not a family council negotiation over lemon sponge and espresso. We pay their lawyers. We don't hide them in the pantry."

I looked at my husband. He was watching me through a pale ring of cigar smoke, his expression heavy with that infuriating, patient pity he used on men he was about to put out to pasture.

"Perry is right, Ines," Whit said gently. "The world isn't what it was when my father gave us that house. Everything has to be clean now. Everything has to go through the books. Your hands are shaking. You can't even hold the silver stand without pain. Why do you want to keep the blood and tears of every angry captain in your apron?"

"Because when they leave their blood in my apron, Whit, they don't leave it on your carpet," I said.

Whit's eyes narrowed slightly, the silver at his temples catching the light. He tapped the ash from his cigar with deliberate care.

"It's done, Ines. The safe combination has been changed. The keys are with Perry. You don't have to listen to the crying anymore. You don't have to bake for the wakes. You're the Don's wife. Start acting like you're retired."

"Retired?" I repeated. The word tasted like cold iron.

"You have the garden," Whit said, his voice dropping into that smooth, soothing tone that had settled a hundred turf wars. "You have the house on the shore for the summer. Let my sister handle the street."

I looked at the desk. At the velvet box. At the three gold rings that represented three terrified women waiting for a protection that had just been handed to an accountant with a ledger.

"And when Maria Moretti shows up at the back door tonight?" I asked.

Perry closed her ledger with a sharp snap.

"Joe is stationed at the gate," Perry said, looking directly into my eyes. "He has instructions to direct her to the women's shelter on Fifth Street. We made a very generous donation there last month."

A cold, hollow silence filled the room.

I looked at Whit. He didn't blink. He didn't look away. He genuinely believed he had solved a problem.

I reached out, picked up my leather gloves from the corner of the desk, and slid them over my sore, swollen fingers.

"You think you took the kitchen from me, Whit," I said, my voice barely louder than the hum of the fluorescent bulb above the door. "You didn't. You just took the roof off your own house."

I turned and walked out.

Leo was still standing by the door, his eyes fixed on the floorboards. Down the hall, Mr. Costa was turning off the ballroom chandeliers one by one, plunging the tables into darkness.

I walked past them, out through the heavy brass doors, and stepped alone into the freezing October rain.