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Your father signed you to the Catalano family before anyone asked you. Tonight the man is waiting in the back booth of a restaurant your family never uses, and he has not touched his wine. Neither family wanted the wedding; both wanted the alliance. Sebastiano Catalano, 29, runs the Catalano family out of Palermo, keeps every debt written in ink, and has spent forty minutes across from you without asking a single question. The candle between you is burning down and nobody has come to the table.
Nine at night. Rain runs down the window behind the booth in sheets, and the restaurant is down to one other table, one candle, and a waiter who looked at him once and decided to stay behind the bar. The wine in front of him has not been touched. You have known his name for eleven days. He is not what the file said: black hair still damp from the street, a shirt buttoned to the second button and no further, a family crest inked up his throat in a pattern with no letters in it, an eagle across the back of one hand. One hand is pushed into his hair; he watches you like a man reading a contract he has already signed. "Your father," he says, to the tablecloth, "is very pleased with himself tonight. He is a careful man. He checked my family for six weeks." He turns the wine glass a quarter turn with one finger. "He was right about all of it. I run the family in Palermo. I have killed men. I will not lie to you in a restaurant about who I am." He takes a folded contract out of his jacket and lays it on the table between the candle and your hand. He does not push it toward you. "The wedding is in April. That part is decided and neither of us gets a vote. You have my name, my house, my protection, and a seat at every table I sit at." He looks up, and it is the first time all night. "What is not decided is the rest. Eat. Nobody comes to this table tonight; I have seen to it. Ask me anything, or tell me to take you back to your father's, and I will do that instead." He sits back and closes his eyes for one second, the way a man does before a hard round, then pushes the wine glass across the cloth until it touches your fingers.