"I can't do that either. He works with her every day. If he disappears, she'll know something's wrong."
Claudio is quiet for three seconds. "What do you need?"
"I need you here. I need Matteo. I need Leone."
The words come out and I hear them from outside myself, because I have never in my life asked my brothers to come to me. I go to them. I've always gone to them. I operate alone, I deliver results, I report back. The Bonaccorso Butcher doesn't call for backup. The Bonaccorso Butcher handles things with a knife and a phone call and the silence that follows.
But this isn't a collection. This isn't an enforcement action. This is a woman sleeping against my ribs who just remembered being raped as a child. A network that's about to send armed men to her place of work, and a bartender who doesn't know he's standing in the crosshairs of something that was set in motion before he was born.
"When?" Claudio says.
"Soon. Days."
"I'll talk to Leone."
"Thank you."
"Brother?"
"What?"
"We're coming."
The call ends. Grace shifts again. Her hand slides across my stomach and her fingers find the edge of my shirt and gripthe fabric the way she grips things in her sleep, tight, holding on. Her tapping is quiet. One beat every four or five seconds. The rhythm of deep sleep. The rhythm of a body that's finally stopped fighting.
I hold her and I think about Javi.
Out of all the people in the world I thought would help me, Delvecchio was the last. He sent me a text to call, so I did.
Two hours ago, after Grace woke up and showered, ate half a piece of toast then sat at her kitchen table staring at nothing while her finger tapped the wood. I sat across from her and said nothing because there was nothing to say that she hadn't already absorbed. She told me she was going to work tonight. I told her she didn't have to. She told me she needed to do something normal, or she was going to lose her mind.
I didn't argue.
She's at the restaurant now. I'm in the apartment. Delvecchio is on the phone, speaking fast, his voice tight with the particular eagerness of a man who owes me two fingers and the rest of his left hand and is grateful for any opportunity to pay in currency that isn't flesh.
"Two guys," he says. "Came into Sal Petrone's card game last night asking about a house in Chestnut Hill. Clean-cut. Notlocals. Professional vibe. One of them had a Delaware plate on his rental."
Wilmington to Philadelphia is forty minutes. Delaware plates. Royce's verification team is already in the city.
"Describe them."
"White. Thirties. One's about six-foot, light hair, built. The other's shorter, dark hair, glasses. Both wearing the same kind of shoes, the hard-soled kind. Petrone said they looked like feds, but feds don't ask about Chestnut Hill houses at a card game on Federal Street."
Not feds. Network operatives. The glasses and the shoes and the professional vibe are exactly what Danila described. These men are trained, recruited through legitimate channels, placed by the Silent's infrastructure. They're not thugs. They're analysts with authority and guns who follow protocol until protocol says to hurt someone, and then they hurt someone efficiently.
"Where are they now?"
"Petrone says they left around midnight. They asked about the house and about a restaurant in South Philly. Didn't name it. Just said they were looking for a woman who works at a restaurant near Ninth Street."
Near Ninth Street. Grace's restaurant is on Ninth Street.
"Did Petrone tell them anything?"
"He says no. But Petrone's a talker, you know how it is. He might have said more than he remembers. Might have mentioned the name, might not have. I can't guarantee it."
"Find out. And Delvecchio, if those two men come back to Petrone's game or show up anywhere in South Philly, I want to know before they sit down. You have my number. You use it."
"Yeah. Okay. I'll call. And Carmelo, listen, this makes us square, right? The fingers, the money, all of it. This intel clears it."
