“Can you tell me?”
“I’ve never seen… I didn’t expect…”
“Didn’t expect what?”
“There was a meeting. I was serving drinks. When everyone got in anargomento.”
“Okay,” I encouraged her to go on.
“Three men are now dead.”
My heart stuttered. “Which three men?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know them.”
“Was it any of the Cavettis?”
“No, they were the ones firing.”
“Who?”
“SignoresRomeo, Marcello, and Savio.”
I didn’t know how to feel about that. I genuinely and sincerely didn’t. Then an awful thought occurred to me. “They didn’t shoot my brothers, did they?”
“No. They shot other men. Older men.”
The gaping hole where my stomach had gone missing filled with the proper organ again.
“That’s the other thing I need to tell you,” Philippa murmured, wringing her hands and looking tentative.
“What?”
“But I… I didn’t know until today. I swear I didn’t.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“I didn’t know what the Cavettis were doing to your brothers.”
I gripped her shoulders, pushing her back to an arm’s length from me. “Antonio and Giorgio?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry but they are beingtorturato.”
“Tortured?” I squeaked out, horrified. Then I asked her a question I was afraid to know the answer to. “Who’s doing it? Who is it that’s torturing them?”
“SignoreAngelo and his men. They are hurting them.”
My stomach crashed at my feet, leaving behind a gaping hole again. “How are they hurting them?”
“Electrocution. Whipping. Beating. He makes them shriek and thrash about.”
I forced myself to press even further. “What about Romeo? Is he doing any of the torturing?”
“No,signorina. He—how do you say—taunts them. But that is all.” She paused, looking back at the doorway. “There is more,” Philippa continued, and I took a deep cleansing breath.
“Yes?”
“Yourfratellowith the short hair…”
