I left her sleeping in my apartment.

I sure as hell couldn’t sleep, and by nine o’clock, my nerves are on fire with dread. In the guest bedroom, Sia sleeps soundly, her lips slightly parted, her blonde hair feathered out over the pillow. I keep my footsteps soft while I leave the townhouse, keys in my pocket. Clean shirt, dirty soul.

For good measure, I deadbolt the front door from the outside, then do the same at the garage. I installed both of them when I moved in because my father always says that a man should keep his options open.

Well, my options are wide fucking open, because Alessia Ricci is sleeping in my guest bedroom and I haven’t killed her yet.

Meanwhile, across the city, my father is waiting for proof. He’ll accept a picture. He’s not a barbarian. But I only have a picture, taken from the doorway, of her sleeping in my bed. Nothing else. I couldn’t bring myself to photograph anything else.

It’s a clear day, the very beginning of May, and the sky is an effortless blue.

I need more time.

The girl who walked barefoot through my house last night to ask me not to kill her—she’s not someone I can murder in cold blood. In the daylight, I know it as surely as I know that I have to do what’s right by my family. My father—he’s always been the guiding force in my life. In everyone’s life.

But then there was Sia, swimming in my t-shirt and sweatpants, her hair rumpled from sleep. Her eyes were wide in the pre-dawn gray, almost as if she was still dreaming. She wasn’t fucking part of what happened to my mother. How old could she have been? One?

I understand more than most people how your family determines who you are and what you do. I’m proud as hell to be a Moretto, proud as hell of my father’s legacy, and proud to step into line.

Just not this way.

Not until I’m sure.

At my father’s house, everything is still and quiet, the front lawn still covered in morning dew. It’s older than my townhouse, one of the first houses to go up in this suburb, but he’s kept it meticulously maintained. If my townhouse sat next to it now, the newer development would look cheap, soulless. Not my father’s house. The two-story structure is hand-painted, no vinyl bullshit, and the flowers in the flower boxes are carefully chosen and tended. It’s not a hedge some developer chose for its long-lived qualities.

This house has been like this for as long as I can remember.

Would my mother have liked it?

I think about her while I walk up the sidewalk, to this conversation that I don’t want to be having, but I have very few memories of her. I half-remember her scent, a floral spritz with a powdery undertone that smelled like getting tucked into bed at night. Her hand on my collar as I tried to run out into the street together. The hint of a laugh, low and melodic. The way she said my name. Everything else is pictures.

It’s Saturday, but the front door is already unlocked. I go in without knocking. He’s expecting me.

My father’s office door is open, and he sits behind a desk more covered than usual. He is, as always, impeccably dressed. I can see the edges of gray slacks beneath the desk, and the button-down shirt he wears, neatly pressed, is only slightly more comfortable than the suit he wears to make his rounds to the laundromats. The surface of the desk is taken up with a breakfast plate, the morning newspaper, and a cup of coffee. His hand is curled around the cup of coffee. It’ll be black. That’s how he takes it.

He doesn’t look at me when I come into the room—not at first. No, not Marco Moretto, not even for his youngest boy. He finishes the story he’s reading in the newspaper first, then flips it neatly down to the surface. When he does look at me, my gut curdles at the anticipation in his dark eyes.

But he waits.

If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s waiting, silent and fucking stoic until you break in front of him.

He doesn’t say a word.

I summon all the necessary rage, let it thin out the line of my lips. That’s when I see it—the whiskey. Expensive. A man’s drink. The bottle sits next to two tumblers on his desk. This is a man’s drink. A celebratory thing.

Fuck.

“She went home with a friend last night,” I say, the anger not quite sharp enough in my voice. It rings hollow, but hopefully he doesn’t hear that. “Slipped through my fingers. I’m tracking her.”

The corners of my father’s mouth turn down and his eyes narrow. It’s as if my words have deadened the air in the room, leaching the excitement out of it. He doesn’t as much as glance at the whiskey. He only takes a breath in through his nose and lets it out, measured and steady.

“Gio.” My name in his mouth is a question, a warning. “Tracking her?”

All the things he doesn’t say swim in the air between us, as palpable as a third person in the room. If she gets out of the country, I’m fucked.

“I haven’t slept. It’s only a matter of time.” I promise it to him fervently, but I can’t hide the truth from myself—it’s a lie. It’s a lie. I can’t kill Alessia Ricci, that innocent in my bed at home. No. I can’t do it.

He drums his fingers on the surface of his desk, but it’s not an impatient gesture, and when he speaks again his voice is measured. “I don’t have to tell you—”

“You don’t,” I tell him. “I’ve got to go.”

“Godspeed, Gio,” my father says to my back.

The moment I step onto the sidewalk, a weight lifts from my shoulders. I’ve bought some time, but I don’t have much of it.

I might not even have a choice.