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Connie for Sonny being killed?" she said.

Michael sighed. "Of course not," he said. "She's my kid sister and I'm very fond of her.

I feel sorry for her. Carlo straightened out, but he's really the wrong kind of husband. It's

just one of those things. Let's forget about it."

It was not in Kay's nature to nag; she let it drop. Also she had learned that Michael

was not a man to push, that he could become coldly disagreeable. She knew she was

the only person in the world who could bend his will, but she also knew that to do it too

often would be to destroy that power. And living with him the last two years had made

her love him more.

She loved him because he was always fair. An odd thing. But he always was fair to

everybody around him, never arbitrary even in little things. She had observed that he

was now a very powerful man, people came to the house to confer with him and ask

favors, treating him with deference and respect but one thing had endeared him to her

above everything else.

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Ever since Michael had come back from Sicily with his broken face, everybody in the

Family had tried to get him to undergo corrective surgery. Michael's mother was after

him constantly; one Sunday dinner with all the Corleones gathered on the mall she

shouted at Michael, "You look like a gangster in the movies, get your face fixed for the

sake of Jesus Christ and your poor wife. And so your nose will stop running like a

drunken Irish."

The Don, at the head of the table, watching everything, said to Kay, "Does it bother

you?"

Kay shook her head. The Don said to his wife. "He's out of your hands, it's no concern

of yours." The old woman immediately held her peace. Not that she feared her husband

but because it would have been disrespectful to dispute him in such a matter before the

others.

But Connie, the Don's favorite, came in from the kitchen, where she was cooking the

Sunday dinner, her face flushed from the stove, and said, "I think he should get his face

fixed. He was the most handsome one in the family before he got hurt. Come on, Mike,

say you'll do it."

Michael looked at her in an absentminded fashion. It seemed as if he really and truly

had not heard anything said. He didn't answer.

Connie came to stand beside her father. "Make him do it," she said to the Don. Her

two hands rested affectionately on his shoulders and she rubbed his neck. She was the

only one who was ever so familiar with the Don. Her affection for her father was

touching. It was trusting, like a little girl's. The Don patted one of her hands and said,

"We're all starving here. Put the spaghetti on the table and then chatter."

Connie turned to her husband and said, "Carlo, you tell Mike to get his face fixed.

Maybe he'll listen to you." Her voice implied that Michael and Carlo Rizzi had some

friendly relationship over and above anyone else's.

Carlo, handsomely sunburned, blond hair neatly cut and combed, sipped at his glass

of homemade wine and said, "Nobody can tell Mike what to do." Carlo had become a

different man since moving into the mall. He knew his place in the Family and kept to it.

There was something that Kay didn't understand in all this, something that didn't quite

meet the eye. As a woman she could see that Connie was deliberately charming her

father, though it was beautifully done and even sincere. Yet it was not spontaneous.

Carlo's reply had been a manly knuckling of his forehead. Michael had absolutely

ignored everything.

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Kay didn't care about her husband's disfigurement but she worried about his sinus

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trouble which sprang from it. Surgery repair of the face would cure the sinus also. For

that reason she wanted Michael to enter the hospital and get the necessary work done.

But she understood that in a curious way he desired his disfigurement. She was sure

that the Don understood this too.

But after Kay gave birth to her first child, she was surprised by Michael asking her,

"Do you want me to get my face fixed?"

Kay nodded. "You know how kids are, your son will feel bad about your face when he

gets old enough to understand it's not normal. I just don't want our child to see it. I don't

mind at all, honestly, Michael."

"OK." He smiled at her. "I'll do it."

He waited until she was home from the hospital and then made all the necessary

arrangements. The operation was successful. The cheek indentation was now just

barely noticeable.

Everybody in the Family was delighted, but Connie more so than anyone. She visited

Michael every day in the hospital, dragging Carlo along. When Michael came home, she

gave him a big hug and a kiss and looked at him admiringly and said, "Now you're my

handsome brother again."

Only the Don was unimpressed, shrugging his shoulders

and remarking, "What's the difference?"

But Kay was grateful. She knew that Michael had done it against all his own

inclinations. Had done it because she had asked him to, and that she was the only

person in the world who could make him act against his own nature.

On the afternoon of Michael's return from Vegas, Rocco Lampone drove the limousine

to the mall to pick up Kay so that she could meet her husband at the airport. She always

met her husband when he arrived from out of town, mostly because she felt lonely

without him, living as she did in the fortified mall.

She saw him come off the plane with Tom Hagen and the new man he had working

for him, Albert Neri. Kay didn't care much for Neri, he reminded her of Luca Brasi in his

quiet ferociousness. She saw Neri drop behind Michael and off to the side, saw his

quick penetrating glance as his eyes swept over everybody nearby. It was Neri who first

spotted Kay and touched Michael's shoulder to make him look in the proper direction.

Kay ran into her husband's arms and he quickly kissed her and let her go. He and

Tom Hagen and Kay got into the limousine and Albert Neri vanished. Kay did not notice

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that Neri had gotten into another car with two other men and that this car rode behind

the limousine until it reached Long Beach.

Kay never asked Michael how his business had gone. Even such polite questions

were understood to be awkward, not that he wouldn't give her an equally polite answer,

but it would remind them both of the forbidden territory their marriage could never

include. Kay didn't mind anymore. But when Michael told her he would have to spend

the evening with his father to tell him about the Vegas trip, she couldn't help making a

little frown of disappointment.

"I'm sorry," Michael said. "Tomorrow night we'll go into New York and see a show and

have dinner, OK?" He patted her stomach, she was almost seven months pregnant.

"After the kid comes you'll be tied down again. Hell, you're more Italian than Yankee.

Two kids in two years."

Kay said tartly, "And you're more Yankee than Italian. Your first evening home and

you spend it on business." But she smiled at him when she said it. "You won't be home

late?"

"Before midnight," Michael said. "Don't wait up for me if you feel tired."

"I'll wait up," Kay said.

At the meeting that night, in the corner room library of Don Corleone's house, were

the Don himself, Michael, Tom Hagen, Carlo Rizzi, and the two caporegimes , Clemenza

and Tessio.

The atmosphere of the meeting was by no means so congenial as in former days.

Ever since Don Corleone had announced his semiretirement and Michael's take-over of

the Family business, there had been some strain. Succession in control of such an

enterprise as the Family was by no means hereditary. In any other Family powerful

caporegimes such as Clemenza and Tessio might have succeeded to the position of

Don. Or at least they might have been allowed to split off and form their own Family.

Then, too, ever since Don Corleone had made the peace with the Five Families, the

strength of the Corleone Family had declined. The Barzini Family was now indisputably

the most powerful one in the New York area; allied as they were to the Tattaglias, they

now held the position the Corleone Family had once held. Also they were slyly whittling

down the power of the Corleone Family, muscling into their gambling areas, testing the

Corleones' reactions and, finding them weak, establishing their own bookmakers.

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The Barzinis and Tattaglias were delighted with the Don's retirement. Michael,

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formidable as he might prove to be, could never hope to equal the Don in cunning and

influence for at least another decade. The Corleone Family was definitely in a decline.

It had, of course, suffered serious misfortunes. Freddie had proved to be nothing more

than an innkeeper and ladies' man, the idiom for ladies' man untranslatable but

connotating a greedy infant always at its mother's nipple – in short, unmanly. Sonny's

death too, had been a disaster. Sonny had been a man to be feared, not to be taken

lightly. Of course he had made a mistake in sending his younger brother, Michael, to kill

the Turk and the police captain. Though necessary in a tactical sense, as a long-term

strategy it proved to be a serious error. It had forced the Don, eventually, to rise from his

sickbed. It had deprived Michael of two years of valuable experience and training under

his father's tutelage. And of course an Irish as a Consigliori had been the only

foolishness the Don had ever perpetrated. No Irish man could hope to equal a Sicilian

for cunning. So went the opinion of all the Families and they were naturally more

respectful to the Barzini-Tattaglia alliance than to the Corleones. Their opinion of

Michael was that he was not equal to Sonny in force though more intelligent certainly,

but not as intelligent as his father. A mediocre successor and a man not to be feared too

greatly.

Also, though the Don was generally admired for his statesmanship in making the

peace, the fact that he had not avenged Sonny's murder lost the Family a great deal of

respect. It was recognized that such statesmanship sprang out of weakness.

All this was known to the men sitting in the room and perhaps even believed by a few.

Carlo Rizzi liked Michael but did not fear him as he had feared Sonny. Clemenza, too,

though he gave Michael credit for a bravura performance with the Turk and the police

captain, could not help thinking Michael too soft to be a Don. Clemenza had hoped to

be given permission to form his own Family, to have his own empire split away from the

Corleone. But the Don had indicated that this was not to be and Clemenza respected

the Don too much to disobey. Unless of course the whole situation became intolerable.

Tessio had a better opinion of Michael. He sensed something else in the young man:

a force cleverly kept hidden, a man jealously guarding his true strength from public gaze,