"I said yes."
She nods slowly. Processing.
"That's how I became what I am," I say. "That's why I do what I do. The Sartoris gave me a life when I had nothing. They gave me a purpose. A family."
I pause.
"And I've spent twenty years repaying that debt. Protecting them. Killing for them. Dying for them, if it comes to that."
Marina sets down her glass.
Marina
My heart cracks.
I feel it happen. A physical sensation in my chest, like something breaking apart along fault lines I didn't know existed.
Twelve years old. Hiding in a closet. Listening to his family die.
I can't imagine it. I try, and my mind recoils from the horror. My worst childhood memory is my grandmother's funeral when I was nine. I cried for a week and my parents held me every night until I could sleep again.
Dante watched his mother, his father, his seven-year-old brother get murdered. And then he spent four years in foster care before ending up homeless at sixteen.
I take another drink of gin. It burns going down.
"How?" I ask.
Dante tilts his head. "How what?"
"Why did Bruno take you in?" I set the glass down harder than I intended. "You were stealing from them. You said yourself that's what happens when you catch a thief in your territory. They kill you. So why didn't he?"
Dante studies me for a long moment.
"Do you really believe that's how it works?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do you believe we just kill without processing who's in front of us? Without seeing the person? Without making a choice?"
I open my mouth to answer.
Close it.
Open it again.
"Actually, yes," I say. "That's exactly what I believe."
The words come out harder than I intended. But I don't take them back.
Dante doesn't flinch. Doesn't look away.
"Then let me ask you something," he says. "Why did you love Sophia?"
The question catches me off guard.
"What?"
"Sophia. Your best friend. The woman you've known since you were children." He leans forward slightly. "Why did you love her? How did you end up best friends?"
