Chapter 5
The dust and torn paper settled slowly over the grand dining gallery. The only sound in the room was the wet, ragged wheezing of Marcus trapped beneath the shattered clock, and the shallow, dry panting of Katherine pinned under the collapsed silver display.
The family members—ten capos and their wives who had attended to celebrate the holiday—pressed themselves flat against their high-backed chairs, their rosy faces turned the color of chalk. Not a single person reached for their phone. Not a single bodyguard drew his weapon.
Salvatore stepped past the overturned chairs. He reached down to the center of the table and, with extreme care, wrapped his large hand around the neck of the private red-wine decanter. He did not unseal the stopper. He lifted the heavy crystal vessel into the clean, pale winter daylight, holding it steady so everyone in the room could see the dark vintage resting inside.
Then, Salvatore walked over to where Katherine lay sprawled among the napkins, stopping three paces from her head.
Roman walked behind him, his gait unhurried, measured, and absolute. He reached into his breast pocket, retrieved a pristine silk handkerchief, and slowly wiped the smear of Marcus’s blood from his right knuckles. He tossed the stained silk onto Katherine’s ruined sapphire bodice.
He looked down at his aunt.
"Salvatore," Roman spoke. His voice was dead calm, devoid of shouting, carrying the terrible, resonant weight of a sovereign passing an irreversible sentence. "Pour her a glass."
Katherine flinched as if struck by a blade. Her bloody nose leaked onto her upper lip, her pearls tangled in the wrought-iron rack across her chest. "Roman... Roman, please. You don't understand what you're doing. I am your father's sister."
"My father is dead," Roman replied, his voice dropping into that chilling, subterranean register that made even seasoned killers avert their eyes. "And you have five seconds to explain why my daughter heard you talking about my murder."
"She made it up!" Katherine choked out, clutching her ribs, her chest heaving beneath the weight of the silver trays. "She's an infant! She repeats nonsense she hears on the television! Ask Marcus! Tell him, Marcus!"
Beneath the grandfather clock, Marcus had gone rigid. His face was gray, blood matting his hair where a brass gear had sliced his temple. He didn't look at his mother. He stared straight up at the vaulted ceiling, his lips pressed shut in absolute, cowardly paralysis.
Salvatore unstoppered the decanter. The scent of dark plums, aged oak, and a faint, bitter almond trace rose into the chill gallery air. Salvatore tilted the mouth of the vessel downward, letting three ounces of the deep crimson liquid splash into an empty water tumbler he had pulled from a nearby cart.
He knelt, holding the tumbler two inches from Katherine’s lips.
"Drink it," Roman commanded.
Katherine turned her head away with frantic, sobbing revulsion, pressing her cheek hard against the carpet. "No! Keep it away from me! Don't let him touch me with that!"
Roman leaned down, resting his forearm on his knee, his tailored sleeve pulling tight over the dark tattoos coiled around his wrist.
"You have to drink this entire bottle of wine, right here, right now," Roman whispered. "If it's just a holiday vintage, Katherine, you have nothing to fear from your nephew."
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Katherine let out a dry, broken shriek, tears cutting jagged tracks through her powdered makeup.
"Aconite," she whispered, her voice cracking into a ragged confession that shattered the silence of the room. "It’s aconite, Roman. Don't make me drink it. For God's sake, don't make me drink it."
