I take a long hot shower when I get home. The blood circles the drain in thinning spirals. Pink. Then clear.
I dry off. Dress. Walk to the bedroom.
The crucifix. The candles. The knife.
I light three candles tonight. Not two. This kill earns more. Crimes against children earn more. The ritual is not abbreviated. It is full, fierce. I kneel with the conviction of a woman who has just removed a predator from the world with her bare hands, who shoved his own flesh down his throat, who watched him choke on the physical evidence of what he did to five girls.
I pray. Loud. Not whispered. The words fill my apartment.
"Signore, accogli questo sacrificio. Quest'uomo ha violato i Tuoi innocenti. Ha usato le sue mani per distruggere ciò che Tu hai creato puro. L'ho fermato. NelTuo nome, l'ho fermato."
(Lord, accept this sacrifice. This man violated Your innocent ones. He used his hands to destroy what You created pure. I stopped him. In Your name, I stopped him.)
The cut on my thigh. I make it without hesitation. The blade opens the skin in a clean line. The blood beads. I don't cry. I don't flinch. The pain is righteous. The blood is righteous. Every part of this is righteous.
No remorse.
Not for this one. Not for the man who brought girls into a back office and emerged twenty minutes later with their ponytails undone. This kill is clean in every way that matters. The candles spoke. I answered. God's will, delivered in a vicolo behind a gelato shop.
"Nel Tuo nome, è finita."
(In Your name, it is finished.)
I close the knife. Press the cloth to my thigh and blow out the candles.
Chapter 21
Vengeance
Niccolo
Salvatore Mancini has been dead for thirty-six hours when I find out.
The call comes from his wife, which is the detail that stays with me. Not from one of my people, not from the carabinieri, not from anyone whose job it is to tell me these things. From Elena, his wife of twenty-two years, calling from a phone that kept cutting out, crying long enough to let the tears run dry.
She thought I should hear it from family. That's how sheput it.
Salvatore and I have known each other since we were eight years old. He was the son of my father's consigliere, which meant we grew up in the same rooms, the same summers on the Amalfi coast, the same understanding of what our fathers were and what that meant for the shape of our lives. He built something legitimate and clean, a business all his own, the kind that didn't require my particular set of inherited obligations. We stayed close anyway. Not because obligation demanded it but because the friendship was genuine, which is rarer in this life than most people on the outside imagine. He was the person I called on the occasions when I needed to remember who I was before I became what I am.
He's been dead for thirty-six hours and I didn't know.
I tell Elena I'm sorry. I tell her I'll handle everything, which is the correct thing to say and also the true thing. I hang up. I sit at my desk for approximately four minutes, which is longer than I usually allow for this kind of moment, and then I call Enzo.
"Mancini," I say.
"I know." He already knows. "I was going to call this morning."
"Whatdo we have."
"The method is unusual. Precise. Nothing the Ferrantes would do, nothing Camorra-standard. It looks professional but not organized crime professional. Different category."
"What category."
A pause. "We're still working it."
"Find the fucker who did this NOW!."
I hang up. I stand at the window for a while, looking at the bay. The water is flat today, the particular flatness that comes before the autumn rains, the sky and the sea the same shade of pale gray. Vesuvius in the distance. The city going about its morning.
