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“I am aware, Nick.”

“But—”

I glance up at him, and the look on my face closes his mouth. “Sorry.”

My guilt, as it turns out, shuts him up faster than my anger.

I’ve built her a rescue she doesn’t know she needs, drafted her exoneration, protected her from information in the name of protecting her from harm, and never once let her choose for herself. I could do every generous thing on this desk, and I still am, underneath all of it, the same man who decided her life for her before she was awake to object.

“After the sit-down, I tell her everything—the dossier, the war, what I’m about to do to us both—and I let her decide what she does with it.”

“You’re going to tell her everything after the fact, so she can’t stop you.”

“Your point?” Not that I need to ask. I know his point.

And he knows that I know it. So he ignores the question. “And if she runs?”

“If she wants to run before the paper flies, I put her on a plane and clear her name from a distance. If she wants to stay—” I stop, because the wanting in that sentence is too large for the room.

“And if she’s angry you waited?”

“Then she’s right to be, and I’ll stand there and take it, the way I should have let her take the truth weeks ago.” I turn from the window. “But I tell her on my terms, with the full picture in my hands. Not in fragments, not by accident. She deserves to hear the whole story from me.”

Nick studies me a moment, then does the thing he almost never does. He puts a hand on my shoulder, brief, the decades pressed into the one gesture. “For what it’s worth, the man who’d cut the Sartorre sections to save himself, I’m glad he’s gone. And I’m glad I’m working for the other guy these days.” He picks up the case. “I’ll stage the release. You survive Thursday.”

He leaves, and I stand alone in the gray dawn. The sealed sit-down notice is already in Matteo’s hands, and a woman sleeps upstairs who still thinks well of me.

When she learns the truth that’s been rotting at my core, she’ll run. She’s too smart not to run. What’s been happening here is too toxic for someone like her, and she isn’t suicidal.

If she runs, I’ll ask one thing of her before she goes. Take Sarah.

It’ll kill Ma. But the old bird isn’t getting younger, and with her heart condition, she isn’t the right person to take care of a six-year-old. That’s the cold, hard truth.

So, I text Nick one last order: If Veda runs and takes Sarah with her, set them up in some country far from here with enough money that they never have to worry about money again, and neither will their great-grandchildren.

If Veda stays, have her checked for a head injury, because that’s the only reason she would do that.

My phone lights, and I automatically flick open the text, assuming it’s Nick.

It’s Allegra. Evidently, she can still smell a decision the way sharks smell blood in the water. It’s an RSVP to the sit-down, accepting on behalf of the Brancati house.

And below it, a second text. Bring the doctor Thursday. I do so enjoy watching her sweat.

I set the phone down and look at the dawn a while longer. Allegra wants Veda at the table, and the viper never wants anything she hasn’t already found a use for. Which means Thursday isn’t only my sit-down. It’s hers too.

She’s planning something with my wife in the room—a final test of the marriage? A scene staged for the capos? A knife?

That’s what she’d use on Veda. Not a bullet. A bullet is too impersonal for Allegra. It’s why she likes them for certain people, but not for others. She uses bullets to tell someone they didn’t matter to her. But a knife is for those who mean something.

Veda means something to Allegra. She’s the first woman Allegra hasn’t been able to shake off of me. And I have three days to decide whether to hand her the audience she asked for.

Bringing Veda to the meeting would be foolish. But it would also throw Allegra off her game, because no matter what else is true, Veda brings out the unstable in Allegra, and we might be able to use that.

But bringing Veda means telling her the truth a lot sooner than I had planned.

Three days to Thursday. Three days to decide something I never wanted in the first place.

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