Chapter 4 - The Table of Bread and Salt
The next evening, Emma decided that dinner would not be served in the formal dining hall with the Murano glass.
She had marched into the kitchen at five o'clock, where Gianni—a man who had spent six years in Attica for manslaughter and who could bone a side of beef in three minutes flat—was preparing Vincent’s solitary cutlet.
"The boss needs to eat with the people," Emma had told him, climbing onto a prep stool.
Gianni had held his butcher knife mid-air, looking down at her like an owl looking at a strange caterpillar.
"Little girl," Gianni growled, his voice sounding like two bricks grinding together, "Don Caruso eats alone in the study. He has eaten alone in the study since nineteen-ninety-one."
"That's why he’s sour," Emma said, swinging her legs. "My grandmama told me: a man who eats alone only feeds his ghosts. You put the plates on the big table in the middle. We're having bread and soup."
Twenty minutes later, Rachel found herself standing in the kitchen, paralyzed with terror as Emma personally laid out five thick ceramic bowls on the heavy oak preparation table where the staff usually chopped onions.
"Emma, stop this immediately," Rachel hissed, reaching for the bowls. "This is where the guards eat. This isn't—"
The swinging door from the main hall opened.
Vincent stood in the doorway. He had changed into a soft charcoal cardigan and grey trousers. His hair was damp from the shower, combed back without the heavy pomade he wore during business hours.
Behind him stood Paulie, his driver, carrying a stack of files.
Vincent took in the scene: the flour on the floor, Gianni standing by the stove with his apron stained in tomato puree, Emma setting a chipped blue spoon at the head of the oak slab.
Paulie’s hand moved toward his pocket out of habit.
Vincent held up a palm.
"What is this?" the Don asked.
"Dinner," Emma said, not looking up from her work. "You said everybody has to eat together sometimes. So sit down. You're the oldest, so you get the chair with the cushion."
Gianni looked like he was about to faint.
Rachel dropped her head, her hands knotting into her apron. "Mr. Caruso, I am so sorry. I tried to stop her, but she—"
"Paulie," Vincent said.
"Yeah, Boss?"
"Put the files on the counter."
"Boss?"
"Sit down, Paulie."
The old driver blinked, then slowly pulled out a wooden stool, his leather shoulder rig creaking under his sports coat.
Vincent Caruso walked to the oak table. He pulled back the heavy pine chair—the one with the frayed needlepoint cushion Gianni had used since the Carter administration—and sat.
He picked up the chipped blue spoon.
"What are we having?" Vincent asked Emma.
Emma grinned, her whole face lighting up like a window on Christmas Eve.
"Gianni made the red soup," she said, leaning against Vincent’s forearm with total unconcern for the sixty years of terror associated with that limb. "And I got the bread. But you have to break it with your hands. Knives are bad luck at the table."
Rachel watched, her breath caught in her ribs, as Vincent Caruso—the man who held notes on half the real estate in Lower Manhattan—reached out with his broad, scarred hands, took a loaf of rustic sourdough, and tore it in two.
He offered the larger half to Rachel.
"Sit, Rachel," he said softly.
"I can't, Mr. Caruso. It isn't right."
"There is no one in this room who is not a sinner except the child," Vincent said, his eyes meeting hers with an intensity that made her throat ache. "Break the bread, Rachel. Before it gets cold."
They ate in silence for the first five minutes.
It was not the dead, predatory silence of the upstairs dining room. It was the thick, living silence of a farmhouse during a blizzard. The kitchen was warm, the smell of garlic and toasted yeast filling the corners, the steam from the soup fogging the small, high windows that looked out onto the rainy street.
Emma talked between mouthfuls.
She told Vincent about her school—about how the girl with the red shoes stole her blue crayon, and how the janitor, Mr. Henderson, looked like a walrus because of his white mustache.
Vincent listened.
He didn't check his gold watch. He didn't look at the files Paulie had left on the butcher block. He dipped his bread into the soup, chewed slowly, and nodded when Emma explained the strategic importance of having the jumbo box of Crayolas with the built-in sharpener.
"The forty-eight box isn't enough," she told him solemnly. "You need the ninety-six. Because the ninety-six has *periwinkle*."
"Periwinkle," Vincent repeated, testing the word like an unfamiliar dialect.
"Yes. You can't draw the sky without periwinkle. The regular blue makes it look like it's going to rain all the time."
Vincent looked at her for a long moment.
"I will see to it," he said, "that we acquire periwinkle."
Gianni, standing by the stove, turned away quickly, pretending to scrub a copper pot that was already mirror-bright. His shoulders were shaking.
Paulie cleared his throat into a napkin.
The front doorbell rang.
Three sharp, electric bursts that cut through the steam of the soup like a siren.
Paulie was on his feet before the third ring finished, his hand inside his coat, his eyes instantly flat and dead. Vincent didn't jump, but the softness in his posture vanished. The iron returned, settling into his spine with a terrible, familiar weight.
"Stay here," Vincent told Rachel.
May you like
He rose from the kitchen table, his movements smooth and silent, and followed Paulie into the hall.
***
