The Donna Seat He Gave Away

Tense mafia dinner where alliances shift over a single chair.

Three months into a contract marriage that cleared her father's blood debt, the unnamed narrator accompanies Lucas Visconti, New York's youngest Mafia boss, to a Visconti-Vitali truce banquet. The sealed seating chart assigns Vitali negotiator Sophia the far end, yet Lucas publicly waves her to the Donna's place beside him. Consiglieri from both families protest the breach, citing the unamended chart, but Lucas invokes the sacrifice of Sophia's brother Dominic, who took a bullet for him six years earlier and died days later. As objections are overruled and the incident is entered into the truce minutes, Lucas fields every toast meant for Sophia throughout dinner. When a waiter's accident slices the narrator's wrist, he does not turn; she removes the obsidian ring of the inner circle and sets it on the table, shifting the room's attention.

• mafia
• contract-marriage
• revenge
• family