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“I haven’t decided.” I don’t sit. I remain standing, because sitting is for guests and I’m not here as a guest. “Your son is nearly at war, Mr. Accardi, right now, tonight. Luca Santini shot up his party to drag me out of it, and he’s going to try again, and the elders won’t move to help him because of you.”

Emotion flickers in the old man’s face. “Because of me.”

“Because you’ve made yourself a ghost. You have to know that a son who can’t produce his own father for a meeting looks weak, and the whole city knows it. You know what it means that you’re still in charge but letting him do all the work.”

He lets out a derisive laugh, one more powerful than I would’ve expected from him. “And now you’re the expert on Camorra affairs. Spare me.”

“I don’t need to be an expert. The elders told him to his face. To our faces. They said produce you, or bury the question. Your absence is putting your son’s life at risk, and you know it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He says it without heat, tired, an old man reaching for an old dismissal.

“Then tell me, because from my perspective, it looks very simple.” I step closer. “You built this. All of it. The empire and the name and the whole organization. You spent forty years making the Accardi name into something people were scared of. And then, when it got heavy, you climbed up here and pulled the ladder up behind you, away from your son. And now he has to carry the whole thing himself, but you won’t even make it official. You won’t even say a single word in support of him when it matters the most.”

“I gave that boy everything…”

“Not when it mattered!” The words come out harsher than I’d anticipated, but I don’t take them back. “Do you want to know what Enzo is, Michael? Since you won’t come down and see for yourself? He’s a man who learned to protect the people he loves the only way you ever taught him: by making the world afraid of him. Because that’s the only love he ever saw in this house. He learned it from you, and he’s spent his whole life trying to learn a better way.”

Michael stares at me, still.

“I have a son,” I tell him, my voice cracking just a bit on it. “A little boy. You’ve met him. You know him. And God help him, but he’s got your face and eyes, and I hope that’s all he took from you.

“I won’t have it.” I’m close to the chair now, close enough to see the old man’s hands tighten on the book. “I’m trying to break this sick tradition, and Enzo’s trying to break it. But we won’t be able to make a single crack while you’re still up here, pretending you’re in charge.”

“You think I don’t grieve what I made?” It comes out low, rough, dangerous. “You think this is self-pity?”

“Whatever it is, you’re hiding behind it.” I hold his gaze. “I think you did something years ago that you can’t take back.” I don’t say David Moretti’s name, but it’s in the air. “And I think the guilt of it has eaten you alive for years. And you’ve decided this, this hiding away, is a kind of penance. But it’s not. It’s just abandonment.

“Real penance would be coming down those stairs and doing something useful with whatever power and love you have left before it’s too late to matter.”

For a moment, his face darkens, his eyes flat, and I see clearly the man who built all of this, the tyrant and the killer all in one. Then it passes, and what’s left is just an old man. Just tired. Just a man looking at a truth someone’s finally had the nerve to carry up his stairs.

“He chose well,” Michael says finally, quietly. “My son. Whatever else he’s got wrong, he chose well with you.” He looks at the cold fireplace. “Nobody’s spoken to me like that in twenty years. They’re all too frightened. Even Genevieve, underneath the noise, she’s frightened. You’re not.”

“I’m terrified of you,” I say. “I’m doing it anyway. There’s a difference.”

Some awful approximation of a smile moves across his face. “Yes, there is.” He sighs. “My daughter never learned it. My son did.”

A moment passes, and he turns his attention toward the empty, cold fireplace. “Go back down, Stevie Callahan. Let an old man think. You’ve given me a great deal to ponder. I’m not used to it these days. When you’re older, you get set in your ways.”

It isn’t a promise, but it’s something. It’s the first crack of light I’ve seen in the whole cursed top of this house, and I’ll take it.

I’m halfway down the stairs when I hear voices, too many of them, sharp and fierce. It’s the particular sound of a place filling up with alarm, a sound I know way too well. I hear doors opening and closing, footsteps running. My heart lurches, and I take the stairs down two steps at a time.

The ground floor has become a different place. There are men everywhere, security, more than I’ve ever seen here. They’re grim-faced and armed, moving with stoic purpose. And in the middle of it, by the doors, I see Marta. She’s in tears, her coat half on and her hands shaking, being helped toward a waiting car by two guards.

“Marta!” I catch her arm. “What’s happened?”

“Carmine.” Her face is destroyed. “They shot him, Stevie. They shot my Carmine. He’s at the hospital, and they won’t tell me on the phone if he’s… I have to go, I have to be there…” The guards have her, gently guiding her out to the car, and then she’s gone into the night with a security detail around her.

I turn, and Enzo is there. He’s upright, which is the first thing I notice. He’s upright, on his feet, alive. But his left arm is bound against his body, a sling under his ruined jacket. There’s dried blood at his shoulder. And his face… I’ve seen Enzo cold and I’ve seen him dangerous and I’ve seen him gutted. But this is different. I’ve never seen him like this before.

“You’re hurt.” I’m across the room without deciding to move. “You’re shot, that’s… Enzo, that’s a bullet hole!”

“It went through clean. Missed the bone. It’s nothing.” His good hand comes up, but he doesn’t quite touch me. It hovers there, wordlessly asking for distance. It’s hard. All I want is my arms around him. “Carmine took the bad one. He stepped in front of…”

His voice falters, something that’s never happened before.

“It should’ve been me,” he murmurs. “He put himself right in the thick of it, the way he always does. And now he’s in surgery and Marta is on her way there, and I don’t…” He stops and tries to compose himself. “It was Luca. He ambushed us and was hoping to kill us both. But he failed. At least, I hope he failed. But it’s war now. There’s no getting around it, no more pretending.”