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His hands claw at my arm, but soon his nails stop digging. His fingers go loose and paw at me, slower each time, then stop. I keep the pressure on until there’s no fight left under me. I’ve had my hands on thousands of dead men. Feeling one go is different.

When I get up, my shirt’s torn open at the second button and I’m breathing like I ran all the way here. The crisp white is red down the front. There are crushed lilies under him, and water and blood soaking into the good carpet. A year ago I’d have been on my knees with a cloth before his heart stopped. Tonight I step over it.

My chin is wet. I wipe it with the back of my hand and it comes away dark. The hand is shaking, and it isn’t fear. It’s the first time I’ve felt anything since she left, and I want more of it.

Nobody moves to come to Bruno’s aid, but they are all staring at me. I can’t read much from their expressions. One done and three more to go. They know there’s no way out.

“Asphyxiation,” I say, and drop his card on his chest. “The card doesn’t lie. I’d never let it.”

That’s when Nunzio runs. Optimistic of him.

He goes for the shut doors. Rafe steps aside and lets him get there, because there’s nowhere to go. They’re locked. Nunzio pulls the handles, then throws his shoulder into them. Nothing gives. He turns with his back to the door and his hands up.

I’ve got his card in my hand already. “Nunzio. Twenty-six. You were a child when your uncle brought you in, and you should’ve stayed being nobody. Instead you signed for three shipments last spring, which is how I know your name.” I read the bottom line. “Multiple stab wounds.”

“Mr. Novak.” He’s got both hands up, sliding down the door. “I just drove. I only ever drove, I swear on my mother, I never⁠—”

“I believe you,” I tell him, and I do. I take out the knife anyway, because the card’s already printed, and a man who only drives still knew where the road went.

He has Tomek’s eyes. Wide open, like a kid’s. I notice it, and it changes nothing.

I grab his collar and drive the knife into his stomach. On my table the dead don’t fight the blade. He does. Every muscle in his stomach clenches around it, and I have to lean my weight in to finish the stroke. He grabs my wrist with both hands, so I pull the knife out and put it in again, higher, up under the ribs. The blade scrapes bone on the way in. I feel it through the handle, all the way up into my teeth.

He’s yelling for me to stop. His breath is hot and fast on my face. His hands slip off my wrist. I stab him a third and a fourth time, fast. The bastard isn’t going down and I need him on the floor. When his legs finally give out, I let go of his collar. He leaves a long red smear down the door.

My sleeve is soaked to the elbow. It’s warm at the wrist and already cooling higher up, sticking to my arm. I know how long it takes to go tacky, and then brown. I’ve cleaned it off other people more times than I could count.

I straighten myself up. Blood is roaring in my ears. Ten minutes ago I couldn’t leave a dead man’s cuff out of place. Now I’m wearing two men’s blood, and the only thing I want is the next card.

Rafe and Tomek lift Bruno and Nunzio into their caskets. Tomek has put his paluszki away. Two remaining and only one still standing—Gennaro has, at some point in the last minute, sat down in his chair with his card in his lap and his eyes closed. He’s waiting for his moment like a professional and I like it.

I do him the courtesy of speed. Rafe holds his gun out to me without being asked. Gennaro opens his eyes and stares at me, ready. I respect that he isn’t gripped by the kind of fear that makes people do crazy things in situations like this. The card says a gunshot wound to the head.

The sound of it goes through the sealed room, then bounces off the walls until it dies. Rafe and Constantine lift Gennaro and transfer him to his resting place.

Then it’s Patrick at last.

He’s on his knees by the last empty casket. He’s talking before I can even get to him, fast, the words falling over each other, offering me things. Accounts. Passwords. His wife … as if I’d want her. He’s sobbing like a baby.

“Patrick.” I crouch to his level, which puts my ruined shirt and bloodied hands right in front of him. He groans. “I want one thing, and it isn’t money.”

“Anything.”

“A year ago a man walked into my house in one of your coats. Past my security, up my stairs, into my bedroom. He left an ear on my wife’s ring dish, where she’d find it getting dressed.” I keep my voice level. Scared men lie when you shout at them, and I want the truth off this one. “That ear belonged to Greg. He did my late runs to the crematorium for six years. The rest of him came back to me through my florist on Ninth, in a box.”

Patrick’s face goes slack for half a second. Then he pulls it back together, and I watch him decide to lie to me.

“I don’t know anything about it,” he says. “Mr. Novak, I swear to Christ. That wasn’t us. We’d never have gone near your house. We wouldn’t dare. Ferro heard about the ear the same as everybody else. He was scared of whoever did it, we all were. We thought it was you testing us⁠—”

“It wasn’t Ferro,” I agree. “Matteo didn’t have it in him. It was you.”

He stops crying.

“I’ve had your books since the showrooms went in August. You keep very tidy books, Patrick. I appreciate that in a man.” I let him see I mean it. “Greg drank, and when he drank, he played cards at one of your tables. He owed you a little over eleven thousand dollars. It’s in your ledger, in your handwriting, marked paid in full on the Tuesday he stopped answering his phone. Greg never paid anything in full in his life.”

He opens his mouth to deny it, then closes it again.

“He called me,” he says at last. “Not Matteo but me because I handle the cash. He said Ferro wouldn’t survive a war with you, and I should get out while there was a chance. Our business is … you could say in transition. I thought I’d handle it. Figured I could make the boss happy by getting access to your house. I knew Greg had it. I knew he couldn’t pay back what he owed. I told him I’d wipe the debt if he brought me the key.”