Sia swings wildly between vulnerable nineteen-year-old and hardened mafia queen in front of my eyes. If the tension wasn’t so thick in the room, I’d have her in bed already. As it stands, I’m pinned at the table, with my father acting like this is a causal conversation and David making desperate faces at her behind his back.

How do they know each other?

I’m as interested as Sia, in this ridiculous fun-house family conversation.

She’s been steering this on her own for two long. “How do you two know each other?”

They all look at me. I can feel their gazes burning into my skin. Sia looks at my father for a split second and then back to me. Wow, she mouths, and I wonder if she’s seeing me as his son.

My father smiles indulgently at me. “It’s a hell of a story.”

“Tell it.” I’m matching his tone so well that even he should be impressed.

Marco Moretto leans back in his chair, looking into the middle distance, and then he turns to David. “When was it? College?”

“You didn’t go to college,” David says, with more than a hint of snark.

“Sharp. Sharp,” my father says with a chuckle, and I have to force myself not to shake my head. “You were in your third year, I think.”

“Second.”

“We met in your uncle’s second year of college,” my father says to Sia. “I was getting my business up and running, and David came into one of the laundromats one night. I can’t remember why I was there. I shouldn’t have been there, that late, but I was, and this man came in. When he found out there were available opportunities, he didn’t hesitate.”

David’s jaw works. He doesn’t look ashamed. Not exactly. He looks resigned. He looks like he never had a choice in the matter, not since the day he walked into that laundromat. Not since the day he first shook my father’s hand. I know that feeling. “I needed a job.”

“What the fuck?” Sia looks disgusted, and her uncle looks away. It’s not enough of a move to say he was cowed, but he can’t look her in the eye. At least for a moment. Then he drags his gaze back to hers. “You decided to be a murderer for hire? What, you couldn’t find a job as a waiter?”

“I needed more money than that,” says David. “And faster. Things were coming apart at the seams in those days. There was a lot of pressure from the family.”

Sia shakes her head, a slow shake. “Unbelievable.”

“I offered good terms,” my father says, as if that explains everything, as if offering good terms can make clear why we’re all in this kitchen and not living lives anywhere else. The most fucked-up part is that I know he did. He’s always paid fairly. Even the gang members he’s worked with talk about how honorable he is.

“Why?” Sia says. “And hurry up. I’m probably going to die any second, so I’d love if we could get to the point.”

“For your mother,” he says, and Sia goes pale. Her forehead wrinkles. What is she thinking? “For the baby.”

God, my poor wife. The color leaches from her face and comes back in a flame. She opens her mouth, closes it again. It’s an awful thing, watching her realize how all the pieces fit together. They still don’t make sense. The edges are still jagged. But they fit together in the most macabre puzzle that’s ever been. “She didn’t tell me that.”

“Of course she didn’t tell you that. She never told anyone. She never even told your father.”

“How the fuck—” Sia puts her hands to her hair. “How did she never tell my father that she needed more money?”

David cuts a glance at my father. “She hid the bill from the hospital. It was too much, Sia, and he was working too hard.”

“He was working so hard because he needed a hit of his own,” Marco comments, and my spine turns to ice. My mother.

“There was nobody else to lend the money,” David presses on. “His own mother was dying. There wasn’t enough business. He was desperate.” He’s on the edge of blaming my father for this, and I know it. Marco Moretto has always been good at business. For the Riccis, he was too good at business. I never looked at it this way, not until now, because they were to blame for the great, gaping absence of my mother in my life.

Marco Moretto, the man who has been at the center of this for all of my life, doesn’t flinch. He gives the slightest huff of his breath. “For god’s sake, David, don’t apologize for him. He killed my wife.” My father’s eyes flash. I might be the only one who notices. He keeps himself under such pristine control.

“I’m not apologizing to him. She deserves to know.”

My father waves a hand in the air. “This is becoming tedious. It’s not productive to relitigate the past, over and over, when there are more pressing matters at hand.” He turns and looks me in the eye.

“You’ve had your fun, Gio. It’s time.”