"Then I run very fast to the car while Carmelo does Carmelo things. Just kidding, I know how to fight too. "
She doesn't laugh, but her mouth does the thing where it twitches and she kills it a second late. "Be careful."
"I'm always careful."
"You're literally never careful. You're the opposite of careful. You're the human embodiment of hold my beer and watch this."
"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"It wasn't a compliment."
"Everything you say to me is a compliment. You just don't know it yet, little vixen."
She rolls her eyes so hard I'm surprised they don't get stuck. "Go to your meeting, idiot."
"Miss me while I'm gone?"
"Not even a little."
"You’re a terrible liar."
I walk away before she can throw the toast at me. I can feel her watching me go and I don't look back because lookingback would mean seeing her face. Seeing her face would mean wanting to stay and wanting to stay would mean not doing the thing Leone needs me to do, and the thing Leone needs me to do might be the most important conversation anyone in this family has had in two years.
So… I walk away.
Marcello's on Fifth is the kind of Italian restaurant that's been in the same family for three generations and has never updated the menu or the decor because both are perfect and everyone knows it. Red leather booths, dim lighting, checkered tablecloths, a bartender who's been pouring since the eighties and has seen enough mob dinners to know when to disappear.
Carmelo and I arrive at seven-forty-five. I'm in a suit because the occasion demands it, dark navy, white shirt, no tie because ties feel like someone's got a hand around my throat and I've had enough of that lately. Carmelo is in black from head to toe, which is what Carmelo always wears, and the hostess takes one look at him and seats us without asking for a reservation.
Renzo Ferrara arrives at eight on the dot. He's older than I remembered, mid-fifties, silver hair cropped close, a scar that runs from his left ear to his jaw, and the build of a man who was dangerous thirty years ago and has spent every year since making sure people remember it. He's got one man with him, a bodyguard who sits at the bar and orders a soda and watches the room the way Carmelo watches rooms, which means everyonein this restaurant is being observed by two men built specifically for violence and the waitstaff is going to earn their tips tonight.
Ferrara sits across from me and looks at Carmelo, looks at me, his face giving nothing.
"DiAngelo," he says. "Your boss has interesting timing."
"My boss has interesting information."
"So I'm told. Talk."
I talk. I start with the marina, the Meridian Star, the surveillance photographs. I lay them on the table between the bread basket and the olive oil and Ferrara picks up each one and studies it without expression. When he sees Vidal boarding the boat, his jaw moves once. Just once.
"Vidal is yours," I say. "Castillo soldier, embedded as an operative in your organization by an outside handler named Kreiss. He's not a Castillo traitor. He was planted. So was our mole, Salvatore Ferretti, who we already dealt with."
Ferrara sets the photographs down. "You're telling me someone put a spy in my family."
"I'm telling you someone put spies in both families. Yours and ours. The same handler, the same network, the same operation. We've been fighting each other for two years while a third party ran intelligence on both sides and used the war as cover."
"Cover for what?"
I open the folder to the shipping manifests. The satellite images. Alexandra's financial analysis. The weight discrepancies, the empty containers, the intake processing facility.
"Cover for this."
Ferrara reads. He's a slow reader, or maybe he's being thorough, but the silence at the table stretches while he goes through each page and Carmelo sits beside me without moving and the restaurant keeps going around us with the particular ignorance of a place that has learned not to notice what happens in the back booth.
When he gets to the shipping manifests, his reading slows down even more. I watch his eyes move across the weight logs and the customs declarations and the discrepancy reports, and I watch the color leave his face the same way it left Alexandra's in the war room.
He sets the papers down. His hand is flat on the table, and his fingers are spread and the tendons are tight. He hasn't looked up yet.
