“I am,” I say.
“You won’t,” he says. “Not tonight. Not in front of her. You bring my daughter home. Then we decide what to do with the boy who borrowed my last name.”
I don’t answer. He stares. I nod once. It’s the only concession he’ll get and the only one he needs.
Pru leans in over the map, finger out. “If he’s stupid and in love, he’ll want to talk before he moves. He’ll want toconvinceher. That buys us an hour.”
“Or it loses us ten minutes,” Tiernan counters. “We move now.”
“We move now,” I say. “And we move as if we’re already ten behind.”
Don Marco reaches for the crucifix on the wall and doesn’t take it down. He isn’t that man. He squares his shoulders instead. “This is on me,” he says, not asking for forgiveness, not performing. “My blindness. My blood.”
“Your blood goes to sleep in my bed every night,” I say. “We fix this and then we talk about penance and how to make it right.”
He breathes once, grateful for the order of things. “Then go. Bring her home.”
Tiernan is already walking. Pru is already texting. Rafferty’s name pops on my phone with a pin and a time. I pocket the device and look at Don Marco one last time.
“I told you Blackvine was his,” I say. “I didn’t tell you all of it. I’ll give you every ledger after she’s out.”
“You’ll give me the names,” he says.
“All of them,” I say. “And you’ll decide which part you want to burn yourself. And the rest I’ll crush under my boot and drown in the harbor.”
He nods like a man who has been handed the weight he thought he wanted but didn’t, and will carry it anyway because that’s what responsible men do.
We hit the steps at a run. Outside, the November air bites clean. Tiernan’s already calling down to the dock; Pru is already threatening a pilot with creative violence if he doesn’t get wheels up.
When the car door slams and the engine growls, the only thing in my head is a white bikini, a paper umbrella, the way her eyes cracked open when I asked about the rosary, and the sound the patio doors made when they betrayed the room.
Blackvine was built to teach boys what happens when you think you can take from men who own the ledger. Tonight, I teach a different lesson: what happens when you take from a man who keeps his promises.
I’ve kept this one since a vent whined over a drain and a kid named Grady laughed through a split lip.
I’m coming.
18
CATERINA
Nico callsit a romantic dinner with a straight face, which is how you know he’s dangerous—he lies to himself first and expects me to take it as the truth.
The terrace faces the sea like a stage built for sunsets. Lanterns swing from iron hooks, all curated glow and borrowed starlight. The table is set with bone-white plates and silver that isn’t shy. A woman in a uniform pours wine and disappears; a man with a scar on his jaw stands ten feet away pretending to guard the view.
Nico pulls out my chair like a gentleman. My wrists are free. My choices aren’t.
“You deserve beautiful things,” he says, settling opposite me. “I always thought so.”
“I had something beautiful. You stole it from me,” I say.
He laughs as if I’ve flattered him. He’s dressed like a magazine spread—linen shirt, sleeves rolled, the expensive watch that he hopes I’ll notice. He’s tanned, handsome in the way of men who learned vanity as a form of homework and passed the test. His eyes keep trying to soften like that’ll make me confuse him with safety.
“Be honest,” he says, pouring me wine I won’t drink. “You expected something worse.”
“I expected the truth,” I say.
“This is the truth,” he says, gesturing at the water, at the lanterns, at the three courses cooling under silver lids. “I was always supposed to be yours.”
