Chapter 6
The Bellandi Sunday table had seated twenty-four every week since the winter of 2010.
It was not a dinner.
It was the district's court.
If two captains argued over collection boundaries, they were placed across from each other over braised veal.
If an alderman had voted against a parish permit, his wife was seated between Donna Elena and Father Thomas until the cold water between them was smoothed away over wine and fresh bread.
At two o'clock on the Sunday following the transition, Whit sat at the head of that forty-foot mahogany table.
He wore his bespoke charcoal suit.
A gold signet ring caught the afternoon light coming through the leaded glass windows.
Perry sat to his right—in the carved walnut chair where my mother-in-law had sat, where I had sat through sixteen years of quiet governance.
The table was set for twenty-four.
Only nine chairs were occupied.
I watched from the second-floor mezzanine, leaning against the cold iron balustrade.
Whit had told me that morning I was welcome to "rest in the upstairs suite and enjoy the quiet."
He had even sent up a pot of chamomile tea with one of Perry's new agency girls.
The tea was cold.
I had not touched it.
Down below, fifteen high-backed velvet chairs stood empty, their white linen napkins folded into stiff, upright points like small tombstones along the linen cloth.
Perry tapped her gold ballpoint pen against her leather folio.
Her knuckles were white.
"Costa," Whit said.
His voice was low, but in the echoing silence of the dining room, it hit like a dropped coin.
"Where is Moretti?"
Mr. Costa stood by the service sideboard, his hands clasped behind his back.
His gaze remained fixed three inches above Whit's left ear.
"Mr. Moretti's wife called at noon, Don Bellandi," Costa murmured.
"She stated that Mr. Moretti was taken with a sudden migraine and would be unable to travel."
"A migraine," Whit repeated.
The word came out flat, dangerous.
"And Frankie Vale?"
"Mrs. Vale called twenty minutes later. Their daughter's child has developed a fever."
"And Donna Elena?"
Costa swallowed.
For the first time in thirty-two years of service, the old house manager looked directly into Whit's eyes.
"Donna Elena did not call, sir."
"She didn't call?" Perry interjected, her voice rising half an octave.
"We sent a car to her estate at one-fifteen! Her driver told ours that she had already left the house!"
"She did leave the house, Miss Perry," Costa said softly.
"Her car was seen parked outside Saint Jude's Parish at one-thirty. She was attending the widows' tea in the rectory."
A heavy, suffocating stillness dropped over the room.
The six junior soldiers who had actually shown up—younger men whom Perry had courted with promises of new territory lines—looked down at their empty bread plates.
None of them dared to pick up a butter knife.
They were ambitious, but they were not fools.
They knew the geometry of the room. When the old women didn't show, it meant the table had lost its blessing.
"She's testing us," Perry whispered, leaning toward her brother.
"Elena thinks because she was married to Carmine, she can dictate who convenes the Sunday table. If we let her boycott the first formal seating, the entire East Side will think we've lost our grip."
Whit didn't answer immediately.
He looked down the length of the table.
He looked at the empty seat opposite him.
My seat.
For nearly two decades, no captain had ever claimed a migraine on a Sunday.
No widow had ever taken tea in a rectory when Ines Bellandi was serving roasted pork and fresh focaccia.
If Sal Moretti was angry, I had known how to place his favorite sweet peppers beside his plate before he could speak.
If Frankie Vale was restless, I had sent his wife home with three braided loaves and a quiet word that kept his guns in the holster.
Whit turned slowly in his chair and looked up at the mezzanine.
His eyes found mine through the iron scrollwork.
I didn't move.
I didn't step back into the shadow of the gallery.
I stood in my plain black wool dress, my swollen hands resting openly on the railing, looking down at his half-empty room.
Whit's jaw tightened.
A muscle jumped beneath his ear.
"Costa," Whit commanded, not breaking his gaze from mine. "Serve the first course."
"Sir... the roasted capon was portioned for twenty-four. Should the kitchen hold the platters?"
"I said serve it."
The meal was a disaster of quiet terror.
The agency waiters brought out silver platters of roasted meat, setting them before empty chairs.
The six young soldiers ate in hurried, nervous bites, the scrape of their forks echoing off the high plaster walls.
Perry tried twice to initiate a conversation about the upcoming parish renovations, but her voice died against the silence.
Whit ate nothing.
He drank three glasses of mineral water, his fingers turning his gold lighter over and over on the cloth.
Click. Snap.
At three-thirty, the heavy front doors finally closed behind the last nervous soldier.
I heard Whit's heavy, deliberate footsteps on the stairs before I saw him.
He didn't knock on the bedroom door; he pushed it open and stood in the doorway, his tie loosened, the scent of expensive cologne and cold sweat clinging to his wool jacket.
"You called them," he said.
I was sitting by the small vanity, winding my mother's watch.
"I called no one, Whit. Your sister had the phone lines in this room redirected to the security office on Friday."
"Then you sent word through Father Thomas."
"I spent the morning at Saint Jude's lighting candles for my mother," I said, looking at him in the mirror. "I spoke to no one but the priest."
Whit walked across the room, stopping three feet behind my chair.
In the glass, his reflection looked older, the lines around his mouth carved deep by forty-eight hours of invisible rebellion.
"Three of my oldest captains refused to bring their grievances to the table today," he said, his voice dropping into that harsh, gravelly whisper he used when an alliance was fracturing.
"Sal Moretti told his crew that if his wife isn't invited by you, he doesn't sit with the Bellandis. The women canceled their Tuesday guild meeting. And two of my own guards asked Costa this morning if the house still honors the old protections."
"The protections you told Perry to throw in the trash?"
"I told Perry to organize them!" he snapped, his heavy hand gripping the back of my vanity chair until the wood creaked.
"Tell Elena to end this, Ines."
"Elena Carmine doesn't take orders from me."
"She takes your cues!" He leaned down until his breath stirred the hair at my temple.
"One word from you, and those women will be back in those chairs next Sunday. I gave you years of luxury. I kept you in gold and silk while other women in this town were scrubbing blood off their front porches. You owe this family your loyalty!"
I stopped winding the watch.
I turned slowly in the chair and looked up into the face of my husband.
"I gave you sixteen years of loyalty, Whit," I said, my voice dropping so low he had to lean in to hear it.
"I gave you hundreds of dinners where no one drew a blade, three wars without a single leak from my pantry, and every secret those women ever whispered while their husbands were bleeding out in your garage. And on Thursday, you gave my chair to your sister and told the neighborhood I was finished."
Whit stared at me.
His grip tightened on the carved wood.
"This is order, Ines."
"No," I whispered, standing up until my chest almost touched his lapel.
"The order was what I built between the plates. You just sat at the head of it."
Before he could answer, a sudden, frantic pounding echoed up from the service entrance below.
Not a polite knock.
The sound of bare fists hammering against the heavy oak door of the kitchen.
A woman's voice screamed through the rain—muffled, desperate, and raw with terror:
"Mrs. Bellandi! Ines! Please! He's going to kill me!"
Whit's head snapped toward the hallway.
Downstairs, the sharp, clipped sound of Perry's heels struck the marble as she shouted for the security guards.
I didn't wait for Whit.
I pushed past his shoulder and started down the stairs.