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I like her—no … no … as I’ve already touched on, I’m fucking in love with her already. That's inconvenient.

"Name a number," she says. "Whatever he cost you. The hospital bills, the club, all of it. My family will pay."

"Look around, Doctor. I bury half of this city. Death pays better than anything your father moves. I don't need Valmont money."

"Territory, then. Routes. My father will deal⁠—"

"There is nothing your father has that I want."

She switches tack without blinking. It's like watching a surgeon switching instruments.

"Your cousin. Nicko. He's critical—I heard them saying his name on the way in. That’s how I figured out what was wrong. I'm a surgeon. Whatever team he has in there, I'm better. It’s not how things are usually done but these are extraordinary circumstances. Put me in that operating room and I'll fight for him like he's mine."

For one long second, I genuinely consider it, just to watch her work.

"He has the care he needs."

"Then what—" and there it is, the first crack, hairline-thin, right down the middle of her voice. She seals it shut so fast I almost miss it. She swallows hard, her eyes wander back to me. She has such pretty eyes. "What do you want? Everyone wants something. Name your price."

Nobody at my table is chewing anymore. I know silence—silence is the family trade. Graveside silence. Viewing-room silence. The silence across my desk while a widow decides between oak and mahogany.

This one beats them all, because this one is waiting on me to break it.

I close the last step between us and force myself not to bend my head and breathe her in. All of her. This close she smells like hospital soap and antiseptic, and underneath it, where the disinfectant gives up, apricots. Warm skin and apricots, twelve hours into a shift, while my whole life smells of lilies—funeral flowers, cold flowers, flowers dying slowly in refrigerated rooms. She stands in my garden smelling like something much brighter and sweeter than any flower.

I want to keep her.

There's a spot of dried blood on her knuckle. She doesn't back away from me. Men twice her size step back from me. She tilts her head up to hold my eyes instead, and heat rolls through me, slow and completely inappropriate for the setting. There's a man crying into my gravel three feet away and all I can think is that I want to know what her fury tastes like.

"Marry me."

Somebody's fork hits china. My mother says my name once, low, like a warning shot. The brother comes up off his knees and gets exactly nowhere—Constantine doesn't even put his wine down to shove him back onto the gravel.

Manon stares at me.

Then she laughs. One short, hard note with no joy in it anywhere.

"You're bloody insane."

"Frequently described that way, yes."

"This is a joke."

"One year," I say. "You marry me. Papers, ring, my roof, the whole world watching. In exchange, your brother walks out of this garden tonight, keeps breathing indefinitely, and the blood he owes for Nicko, wiped clean. Twelve months from the day you say I do, you're free."

Her eyes go past me. To the fountain. To the spade, and the folded plastic with the stone sitting on top of it. She's a smart woman. She doesn't ask what it's for.

"You don't even know me," she says.

I don't answer right away.

"Consider the year an introduction."

"Laszlo." My mother again. "Think about what you're⁠—"

"I have."

Somewhere behind me, Dolores mutters a mix of prayers and curses in Italian and, God love her, starts setting another place.