Killian left them alone to get themselves dressed in the doorless dining room. They could hear him moving around in the kitchen, clinking glasses and zipping bags and thumping things around. She shimmied the tight jeans up (Killian optimistically guessing her waist size a little lower than it really was), and slipped on a silly sweatshirt he’d picked out for her. Killian would never be a personal shopper. He should stick to doctoring and killing. And driving fast. She held the sweatshirt out and scanned it upside down. It read, Yay, It’s Friday! It was pink and the writing was in silver, and she was sure he bought it to make her laugh. It wasn’t even Friday, and even if it were there was nothing to cheer about. But the sweatshirt was clean and warm and dry and that was all she wanted right now anyway.

Rocco got dressed as well, quietly putting his things on across the other side of the bed. Carpenter pants in gray, and a black T-shirt. He’d stuffed his fading hardness away and the shirt hung down to hide it.

At the archway he put his hand out and she took it and said, “We’ll pick up where we left off.” He laughed and he kissed her forehead.

When they headed down the dark hall they could see the kitchen lit up ahead of them. Killian sat at the table, head lowered, and he focused on papers he held in his hands. On the table in front of him, like a weird administrative place setting, he had a notebook computer, a tablet, papers held by paperclips, a paper notebook, and a manila file folder. At his right hand was a glass tumbler filled almost to the top with amber whisky. There was a bottle in the center of the table and two extra glasses were at the ready, one placed inside the other.

“Everyone get yourselves a seat,” he said to the papers as she and Rocco emerged into the ring of light spilling from the single warm bulb housed in a plastic Tiffany-style lamp that hung over the table on a white electric cord woven through a white chain. They took their seats sensing a rising gravity to Killian’s presence. He really did have news, and it didn’t seem like it was going to be good.

Killian kept his bearded face low, turned to the papers, gathering his thoughts like he was preparing to read a will to the bereaved, and for some reason, his studious manner brought her a chill, even underneath her thick sweatshirt. Killian nodded as if coming to terms with how he would present this, a sightless hand extending across the table and plunking the two glasses side by side then pouring whisky for them without looking. Rocco took the two drinks, sliding them across the table, then guiding one her way. She sat on Killian’s right and Rocco sat on her right, looking at his friend over her shoulder.

“Hey,” Killian said, his eyes coming up as if he’d just noticed their arrival. He scratched at his scalp with one finger.

“You learned something,” Rocco said, his voice low and unquestioning, making a statement.

“I did. Yeah, I learned who hired you to kill Daniella.”

“Who?” she said, an anxious tightness making her voice higher than it usually sounded.

“Well, I’ll say that I’m quite sure. There’s no way to be certain until we hear from this person themselves.”

“Who?” she repeated.

He placed his elbows on the table, his palms came together in the attitude of prayer and he brought his hands to his bowed face until the knuckles of his thumbs were pressed to his nose.

“You ready for this?” he asked her.

She nodded and rubbed her hands up and down her denim thighs.

He took up an iPad and he turned it to face her. “You recognize this man?”

She hadn’t known what to expect. She thought that when she was shown the picture there should be some recognition. She should know the face of someone who wanted her dead. She should see the face and have an awesome revelation: oh, the man my father wronged! ...Or the guy I cut off in traffic, or my ex-boyfriend, even a face from one of the families... Some soldier who had worked for her father or one of the other Dons, and now he was deluded by visions of grandeur.

Nothing.

The face she was shown sparked no recognition. The photo was of a man getting into a vehicle. Couldn’t tell the vehicle, only the roof was visible, and it was out of focus. The man was looking in the general direction of the camera but she sensed the photographer was hidden. The man was casting a glance over his shoulder before he got in his vehicle. He had sunglasses in his hand, poised as if he were just putting them on or just taking them off. He was lean, vaguely handsome, she would need more than one photo to decide. Blonde hair, square jaw, black eyes like Rocco, or maybe her own. His blonde hair seemed bleached lighter but she got the impression he was naturally light. Light hair and black eyes, cold black eyes. There was a savagery in his eyes even evident in this static image. Rocco tilted the screen so he could get a look as well. The corners of his mouth turned down and he shrugged. She felt a weightlessness, a hopelessness suddenly. Rocco looked to her and she shook her head no. He shook his head as well. Neither of them had seen him before. She’d hoped this would provide answers. She turned to Killian, couldn’t hide the dejection, and she murmured, “No, I don’t know him.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Killian nodded, and he brought the screen to himself now and he swiped with a finger, turned it back to her. Said, “How about this wee boy? ...You recognize him?”

On the screen was a young boy in swim trunks. A wild looking kid, one she recognized. He was mugging for the camera, smiling but frowning, showing off that he was missing a tooth. He made a muscle with his scrawny eighth-grade arm and was squeezing some other boys out of the picture with his antics. His feet were planted in white sand.

“My cousin? ...Flavio?”

Killian gently gripped her wrist and she looked down at his hand, at the tattoo that scribbled down from under his cuff, the tail of a dragon curled down to his knuckles. “They’re both Flavio, love.”

He swiped the photo back to the man getting into a car, said, “This is Flavio as a man. He’s become quite a dangerous one. He is the one who ordered you dead.”

“Flavio?” she whined. Impossible. “Why...why would my cousin want to kill me?”

“He’s not your cousin.” His hand that held her wrist squeezed her gently again and he said, “He’s your half-brother.”

She reeled. Almost literally reeled. Her whole world coming at her so fast the chair was tipping over and she was washed away as if by a tidal wave. She flattened both palms on the cool table before she did end up on the floor. The room spun as she struggled wildly to comprehend. “My half...what?”

“I’m sure of it,” he said. “Your father had been sending money to him in Sicily his whole life. Sent it to Flavio’s mother and then when she died he sent it to a trust held by an Italian lawyer named Benedetto Carlucci. Not that much money, but it kept him fed and clothed and a few times it even kept him out of jail.”

“Out of jail?”

“Flavio was a wild one,” he said, cocking his head, and seeming to surmise some of the things he’d read about the boy who she thought was her cousin.

She shrugged away Killian’s hold on her arm and she stood, walked backwards then away from the table and leaned her ass against the kitchen counter. She brought both her hands up and covered her face, stared into the floor. “Flavio?”

“Flavio is known as Flavio Vacca. That was his mother’s surname. He never had a father. He’s risen to some prominence in Sicily but not as a made man—as a man who has made a name for himself for running a small guerrilla army of bloodthirsty soldiers that seem to operate for any family. Anyone who will pay. He’s made some money and he has a nasty reputation but he is not a made man. He has no Family. He’s like the private contractor of the Sicilian underworld. He facilitates, but he has no loyalty.”

“Why would he want me dead?” she said, her eyes welling with wet that threatened to spill over.

“My feeling is that he knows your father is his father. Knows that he passed and knows he can contest the inheritance and the holdings.”

“Can he?”

“You know the world better than I.”

She nodded. Rocco stood now and as he came to her she put her arms out and he held her.

Killian said, “My guess is he wants a family. He wants to be made. He wants to rule. He must think he’s owed it.”

A tear rolled down her cheek as she began to fathom the betrayal. Her father had lied to her. Spending those summers in Sicily he would go once a week and she would stay a night or two with her father’s sister (a woman he told her was his sister). They had a small house in a beach town near Siracusa. She would go with Flavio and some of his friends and they would hang out at the beach. Flavio was a wild kid. Killian got that right. He was a loud mouth, had a hot temper that came quickly. Even in his early teens and younger she knew he was trouble. She thought of her aunt. The woman she knew as her aunt. She wasn’t? She wasn’t her real aunt like her father had told her. They would hug, they would kiss cheeks… Did her mother know? She came to Sicily with them, but those days spent with Flavio, Daniella’s mother stayed alone at the house they had rented.

“He can have it. He can have it all. I don’t want it. I want life. I want my life...”

She stifled a cry, didn’t want them to see her suffer like this. The betrayal was enormous. Her father had included her in his tryst. She was complicit. She’d played with her half-brother, calling him cousin, while her own father played house with another woman, a woman he was cheating on her mother with. It was insupportable. Another tear rolled down her cheek. “Papa,” she whispered. Wished she could talk to him, cry to him, and beg him to tell her why. How could he be so cold?

“Excuse me,” she said, gently pulled away from Rocco and she left the room, her feet moving quicker the closer she got to the dining room and the bed. The tears were coming and she needed to be alone.

* * *

Rocco stared at his hands for a good long time. Killian sat wordlessly next to him. After a while he looked up and when his eyes met Killian’s he felt his tension ease. Not from what he gleaned from his good friend, but a certain settling solace came to him. He knew what he had to do.

“I’m going to give her one.”

Killian’s brow lowered and his head cocked. “One of what?”

Rocco leaned forward, said with great gravity, “One of...those.”

Recognition flared his friend’s eyes, brought back their sparkle. “Ah, well...one of...those.” He winked gleefully, then he leaned back in his chrome-legged chair, easing it rearward so it balanced on just two legs and he sneakily looked down the hall where Daniella had disappeared. When he came back down on all four legs he rested a tattooed hand on Rocco’s forearm, and said, “Mate, you’d be mad not to.”

“First I’m going to need a phone number. Don’t tell me you don’t have it.”

Killian thought a moment, his mouth flicking from side to side, his mustache twitching. He said, “If we leave her here and go on our own she will be livid.”

“That’s why you’re not coming.”

“Rocco...”

“Stay with her. I have to do something and I need you to keep her safe.”

Killian mushed his fingers into his cheeks above his beard and massaged his face, groaning with frustration. They’d known each other a long stretch, and in that window had lived lives fraught with danger and death, making their friendship one that seemed a hundred years old sometimes. Killian would know not to argue, just to facilitate. “Be careful,” he said. “I didn’t say it...” he looked down the hall again, then leaned close and spoke confidentially. “Didn’t want to upset Daniella...Flavio’s mother...she was...a bad one too...in the end, killed by cops. Went down in a gunfight. Flavio’s her son...” He let the implication hang. Apples don’t fall far from the tree. And Rocco had a whooshing flux of potted marijuana, water on his Cheerios, and his father’s effective straight jab.

He nodded. “But Papa Nero was her father...maybe some of his...I don’t know...clarity...got left to this kid.” He laced his fingers together on the table, eyes absently on his almost empty glass of whisky. He thought of yellow roses then, new beginnings, and how Daniella asked him not to kill.

“A phone number, Killian. And I’ll need your car.”