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I’d never liked it at Lando and Carla’s sprawling modern mansion in Wicker Park. It was incongruous with the rest of the expensive, tasteful homes in the neighborhood, a cement block plunked down at odd angles behind a brutalist-style gate and guard tower. There was no warmth in the home, and it perturbed me that there were no family photos anywhere.

As if Lando and Carla weren’t sentimental at all, as if the idea of family, which was the foundation of their duty, honor, and loyalty motto, held no real substance for them.

“You know,” Carla began conversationally after I started playing a piece by the Italian composer Lorenzo Fiore. “I never expected my son to treat you the way he did.”

I looked up at her quickly, my fingers instantly stumbling, to find her leaning her forearms against the piano across from me.

“What do you mean?”

She hummed, swirling the liquor in her Negroni before taking a sip. “Well, after he married you, I cultivated our friendship, hoping that your youth and beauty might have some power of persuasion over him. But it seemed he didn’t have a taste for you.”

Her voice was condescending, as if I’d failed in my duty as a woman.

I fought to keep my face neutral. “The feeling was mutual.”

“Oh, but things changed,” she said with a wicked little smirk. “I know he started to fuck you, but still he seemed almost disdainful of you in private and only cursorily attentive at public events. I thought if I told you to stop taking birth control, a child with him might help turn you into a tool to use to keep him in line, but even then, no grandchildren came.”

I didn’t tell her that Dario had been absolutely adamant about my use of birth control. In fact, the only time I saw him for the first few weeks after we had sex for the first time was when he appeared in my bathroom to watch me take my pill. When he couldn’t be there to confirm, he sent Bonnie. I’d never told Carla because I knew how she would react to it, and I didn’t want to poison our rapport with her disappointment.

“You haven’t been a very good wife,” she said with a little pout, as if she felt sorry for me. “But what can one expect of a Sicilian?”

I raised both my brows. “Your family is originally from Sicily.”

“Oh, absolute ages ago.” She flicked the words away with a twist of her wrist and took another sip of her drink.

It was nearly seven in the morning after the night I’d taken Luca to the movies and we’d stormed the church. I was so exhausted I felt delirious, but at the same time I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, which was why I’d consented to having a drink with my in-laws.

Lando still wasn’t back from the kitchen with the tea, which was a bit strange, but he often got waylaid by one of the maids. He was as lecherous a stereotype as they came, unfortunately.

“What do you have against Sicilians?” I asked, not really expecting her to answer.

Carla had a lot of judgments against many different people. It didn’t surprise me she harbored some for my native land.

“Oh, they’re the worst of us all,” she mused. “Misogynistic, paternalistic pricks, the lot of them. Did you know, your father once thought about taking me for his bride.”

I blinked, my fingers stilling on the keys. “You’re serious.”

“Oh yes,” she said blithely. “He spent a year in Chicago learning English and working with Lando’s stepfather. He was very good looking back then, very suave.” Her voice was almost dreamy as she remembered him, and it sent a strange chill up my spine. “He didn’t want me in the end, though. He told me he had a woman back home he wanted to marry. She’d refused him once before, claiming he was too immature.” Her laugh was as hard as the click of ice in her glass. “Can you imagine? Refusing such a man.”

I could, because I had desperately wanted to refuse Dario, but then, I hadn’t had the courage to tell my father no either.

“You’ve never told me that story before,” I murmured.

“No? Well, I’m feeling nostalgic on the eve of such change.”

“What change?” I asked, but the chime of a text had me pulling out my phone to check my messages.

I had a new one from Petyr.

Petyr: Some Russians were hired by a man named Orpheus to kill Felipe Malatesta. Do you need their names?

I’d been right that Niccolo was behind the assassination, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. In my youth, Felipe had adored his son and vice versa. What could have changed so fundamentally in six years?

A loud cacophony from the kitchen had my head snapping up and the phone falling from my startled fingers.

Alarmed, I shot to my feet and raced down the hall to the kitchen toward the noise.

I slammed into the wall when I arrived in the doorway, gawking at the sight before me.