The kitchen went quiet. The napkin battle plan sat between us with its Xs and its oval and its pen-drawn exits. Midge yawned—the wide, theatrical yawn that showed every tooth she had, which wasn’t many—and collapsed sideways on the chair.
“Bed,” Santo said.
Not a question. The Daddy voice, arriving the way it always arrived — without announcement, without transition, simply present, the register shifting the way weather shifted, the atmosphere changing around us.
I went.
Thedresswasblack.
Simple. The kind of simple that cost money. No embellishment. No lace, no detail, nothing that tried. Just fabric that moved the way good fabric moved, like it had been poured rather than sewn.
I put it on.
The zipper was on the side. I reached behind me and pulled it up and the dress closed around my body like an answer toa question I hadn’t asked. It fit. Precisely. Like someone had looked at me and understood the shape of what I was and built something to hold it.
The mirror in the bathroom was fogged from the shower. I wiped it with my palm—one stroke, the condensation clearing in a smear, my reflection assembling itself from the steam like a photograph developing.
I did my hair.
I looked in the mirror.
The woman who looked back was someone I didn’t know.
Not the girl from North Kedzie. Not the kid who’d slept in a closet during the bad foster homes because closets were small enough to defend. Not the thief who’d climbed through a window in Oak Brook with a bobby pin and a lie and a four-pound chihuahua in her jacket.
Someone else.
Cora Flores. Maria’s sister. Here to speak.
The bathroom door opened. I didn’t turn. I watched him appear in the mirror—the reflection of a man in a charcoal suit, the fabric sitting on his shoulders the way authority sat on his brother’s, but different. Dante in a suit was a man who belonged in one. Santo in a suit was exactly what Dante’s wife had said—a wolf in a costume. The tattoos visible at his wrists where the sleeves ended. The crooked nose. The jaw that belonged on a wanted poster. Everything about him said I will hurt you for her, and the suit was just the frame around the statement.
He looked at me in the mirror. I looked at him looking at me.
He left. Came back. A mug in each hand—coffee, black for him, mine with the cream and sugar he’d stopped asking about and started adding automatically. He held mine out.
I took it. Our fingers touched on the ceramic. The warmth of the coffee and the warmth of his hand and the roughness of hishealing knuckles against my fingers. The contact lasted a second longer than the transfer required. Neither of us pulled away.
“You’re brave,” he said.
“I’m terrified,” I said.
He looked at me. The dark eyes. The severity that ran in this family like a genetic trait, but his version of it—hotter, closer to the surface, always threatening to become something else.
“Same thing,” he said.
I drank my coffee. He drank his.
“You’re sure I can bring Midge?”
“Of course. It’s non-negotiable. I’ve informed the staff—they have chicken ready for her.”
I smiled then picked Midge up. She went into the jacket—the leather one, Santo’s, the one that smelled like him and was two sizes too big and had become the transport vessel for her.
I was bringing a dog to a mafia sit-down. The absurdity of it should have been funny. Instead it was the most comforting thing I could think of — four pounds of fury and loyalty pressed against my heart, the one creature on earth who had chosen me first and never revised the decision.
Santo held the door.
TheEisenhowerwasquietfor a Tuesday.
