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He looks at me for a long time, and I pray my brother can’t see the begging underneath. Please believe the worst version of me. It’s the version that keeps you breathing. Be angry instead of dead.
“Wow.” He exhales, wounded, and picks his wine back up and finishes it, and I know I’ve done it. I’ve won the worst victory of my life.
He clears his throat, and I know that sound. It’s the same sound he made at our parents’ funeral when he was trying not to cry. “Okay. Message received. You’re happy, I’m smothering, I should go home.”
“Mark—”
“No, you’ve been clear.” The smile he puts on now is the fake one. “I’ll fly out tomorrow. I’ll send a gift.”
“That’s not—”
“Congratulations on your marriage, Dr. Sartorre. I hope he’s everything you’re willing to lose me over.”
“Mark, come on. Don’t be like that.”
“Goodnight, Veda.”
My full name. Not Vee. Fuck.
He goes back inside to say a polite goodbye to Diana and Sarah, gracious to the last because he was raised right. Through the French doors, I watch as he crouches to Sarah’s level to shake her hand with total seriousness, and it nearly finishes me off where I stand when she throws her arms around him for a hug instead.
I won, and nothing has ever felt less like a victory. It takes only moments to realize why.
He’s leaving tomorrow, unconvinced but wounded into a retreat. It will keep him alive, and that was the whole point. Except I know my brother. Mark doesn’t retreat.
He regroups.
He’ll dig. Quietly now, from Honolulu. He loves me, which makes him relentless in a way hired professionals never are.
I have sent my brother home angry and curious, which is the most dangerous thing my brother can be.
Or am I panicking? Am I paranoid?
I don’t know.
Inside, Sarah is laughing at something, and Lupo replies softly, composing the warm, familiar family sounds I cherish. These sounds drift out onto the terrace where I stand, having just betrayed the family I was born into to protect the other. Two families, and I am the dividing line. I’ve come to understand that borders only exist as long as everyone agrees to respect them.
My brother digitally stalked me because I was a little vague. I don’t think the border will hold.
I pick up his abandoned wineglass and mine, standing there briefly with a glass in each hand as the lake turns black. Then I take them inside, past the piano, to the sink—where my family needs me to be a wife. I begin with the dishes because my hands need a purposeful task that my heart cannot spoil. This is the one thing I can do right without fucking up.
Tonight, I—
Ow, shit.
I jerk my hand from the sink only to find my finger bleeding at the tip. Someone left a knife in the soapy soaking water.
“Guess I can fuck this up too.”
18
LUPO
The call comes hours before sunrise. Veda doesn’t budge. She was stressed about her brother’s visit and took one of her sleeping pills. I’m grateful.
On the line is Renzo, but the voice is wrong this time, stripped down to just the facts a man can force out while running. “Bergamo warehouse. Fire, Don Sartorre, and it’s bad.” A breath that has smoke in it. He hacks as he says, “The trucks can’t get close enough. Two men were inside on the night count, we pulled them out—”
“Who.”
