The two soldiers stationed outside the townhouse didn't acknowledge me when I left thirty minutes later. They never did. I was the Don's woman in name, which meant I existed in a category no one knew how to handle: not family, not civilian, not quite anything that had a protocol.
I limped into the back office of the Sloane import-export front on Mulberry Street. My desk sat in the narrow room behind the legitimate operation, where the real books lived. For some reason, every associate I passed that morning looked at me with something between pity and discomfort, the way men look at someone who's already dead but hasn't been told yet.
Later, while filling my mug in the small kitchen off the hallway, I overheard two of the women from the front office whispering to each other through the half-open door.
"So it's true? The Don really passed over Olivia for that girl? The Vitale girl?"
"You should have seen it this morning. Penelope came in with some little stain on her dress, and he picked her up. Right there in the back room, in front of everyone at the sit-down. Carried her like she was made of glass."