It’s a risk to get so close to the crime scene, but I can’t hold myself back. I have to see this with my own eyes. We pull up to the sidewalk around the corner and down the road, far enough that nobody would suspect us, and I pull out a pair of binoculars to look at the building down the road from us.

My heart sinks at what I see.

“Bruno... I’m so sorry,” Serena whispers, putting her hand on my arm.

Uncle Carlo’s workshop has police tape wrapped around the whole perimeter and over some of the shattered windows. The walls are riddled with bullet holes, there’s broken glass all over the ground, and I can see the door has been kicked down. I can even see shells on the sidewalk, and a few uniformed people are walking around the place. They’re too busy with their work to look our way. I can just barely make out some of the inside of the shop, and I see splintered wood: signs of a fight.

And there’s blood on some of that wood.

I lower my binoculars, and I can feel the color leaving my face. The message I got in the cabin was that Uncle Carlo’s place had been hit. I wasn't expecting something like this.

“And Nico didn’t say…?”

I shake my head. “He just told me the shop had been hit. I... I don’t remember anything else, it got hazy after that.”

“Should we go up there and see…?”

“We can’t,” I say through a tight jaw, clenching the wheel so hard my knuckles turn white. “Even after those investigators leave, there will be someone watching this place. They’ll be waiting for us. Disguises won’t matter.” We’re both wearing sunglasses and hats now, but my frame is easy to recognize this close to where I’m being looked for.

“Those bastards,” Serena says in a thin voice, and even as she does, I’m looking at the place and seeing glimpses of the past. I see myself running away from that shop my first few weeks here, only to end up back there shortly after. I see my friends and me wrestling in the back. I see Uncle Carlo teaching me how to defend myself, how to be an American, how to work to support myself. I see him being a father to me when my father couldn’t be there.

Then the image of him getting shot alone in the darkness flashes into my head. I feel something hot on my face, and I realize a tear is running down my stony cheek. Serena must have noticed, because I feel her small arms wrapping around my bicep and resting her head on it.

We’re quiet for a long moment.

Then there’s a tap on the car window.

Instinctively, my hand goes to the gun at my side, and my eyes snap to the window, ready to fight whomever it is, but I only see Nico looking down at us, putting his hands up after seeing my gesture.

I let out a sigh, tension leaving my shoulders, and I roll the window down.

“Jesus, try to be here more than an hour before you get arrested again,” he says as I relax my hand, and I unlock the door, nodding for him to get in the back. He does, and I roll the windows back up once he’s safely inside.

“Hey, Nico,” Serena says, smiling apologetically back at him.

“Sorry to get the jump on you,” he says, running his hand through his hair. “Wish I could have said more over the phone, but I don’t know who’s being listened to anymore. We’re going through burner phones like water.”

“What happened here, Nico?” I say, my voice gravelly. “Where is Carlo?”

“He’s alive,” Nico says first, and I see Serena visibly relieved. I am too, but my anger makes my emotions hard to read. “But Bruno... he’s not in a good way. He’s comatose in the hospital. We’ve got our men keeping an eye on him, but the police aren’t making it easy. They keep trying to question our guys.”

“This was a setup,” I growl.

“No doubt,” Nico says grimly. “I heard about what happened here a few minutes after it went down. One of our guys happened to be at the gas station down the road and heard the shots. Weren’t any cops around for a mile.”

“Oh my god,” Serena says, her eyes widening. “They were in on this?”

“Price,” I say.

“The cops have been putting on more and more pressure ever since you got out, Bruno,” Nico explains. “They tried to be subtle at first when you got out: nobody wanted word spreading that someone broke out of Sterling. That’s why your face hasn’t been plastered on every TV and newspaper in the country. So instead, Price has been leading an investigation that’s been twisting our arms.”

“Have there been arrests because of me?” I ask, turning back to look at him for the first time.

“No,” he says, “turns out that you keeping out of Costa business while you were in prison really helped us out. They can’t make the connections they need to start making arrests. But they can harass us so much we can hardly move, and that’s what they’ve been doing since you got out. The Cleaners are getting bolder, and the cops are making it easy, since Price is in their pocket.”

I rub my forehead, feeling a headache coming on. This is too much. How could everything have boiled over so much so quickly?

“We shouldn’t stay here too long, speaking of,” Nico says, glancing out the back window. “Let’s get to the Room With a View.”

* * *

Nico did good with his share of the heist money. He and Rafaela have fully rebuilt and renovated the Room With a View to look better than it ever had been before. While Serena and Rafaela throw their arms around each other and hug warmly, Nico and I take a seat by the bar.

“Cleaners were beyond mad about the heist we pulled off,” Nico says in a low tone. “They needed that money bad. They can’t prove we’re involved, but they can throw a fit.”

I clench my fist and feel my teeth grinding. “This is my fault. I should have planned better.”

“None of that bullshit,” Nico says, pouring us a couple glasses of limoncello. “You and I both know what those fuckers are capable of. If it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else. You killed Lorenzo Abruzzi.”

It feels like a lifetime ago that I killed that wretch. Mafia royalty in his own right. “Wonder how he’s enjoying his little corner in hell.”

“Not as much as we’ll enjoy ours,” Nico says, and we clink our glasses together and drink.

Serena and Rafaela come over to join us after their quick reunion, and we all sit together at the bar. For a moment, it feels like old times.

“Bruno, one of the boys sent me a picture of your uncle from the hospital to let me know he’s still hanging in there,” Rafaela says gently. “If you want to see, for peace of mind…”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t want to see him like that. He wouldn’t want to be seen like that.”

“No problem,” she says with a quick wave of her hand. “Anyway, good to see you both. Life’s treating you two alright, I see,” she adds, looking our outfits up and down.

“Helps to blend in,” Serena says.

“Not anymore, though,” I say. “Someone found us up there. I took care of it, but we can’t keep running like this. If we go further, more people will just keep getting hurt here.”

Serena nods in agreement. “Now we just need to figure out where to start.”

“We could try to mobilize some of the Costas,” Nico says, leaning on the bar. “You’ve still got a lot of friends here, Bruno, not just me and Rafaela.”

If I’m honest, I want even less to do with the mafia now than ever. I want to leave that life behind me, and I plan on making that happen. But now isn’t a good time to try and burn that bridge, not while we’re recouping here with two good friends who still have close ties to the Costas.

Much like Italy, the mafia here is a complex web that isn’t always so easy to work around.

“This is personal,” I say simply, “and I don’t want to fan the flames of another war. Enough blood is getting shed without my help. Besides, we know now that things are going the way they are because of Price and his lackeys in the NYPD.”

The others nod in agreement. “The police are untouchable, though,” Serena points out, “it’s not like another gang where you can go in and just start fights until things go our way. How do you go up against a detective?”

A confident smile crosses my face. “I have a good idea of where to start.”