Aria lingered in the garden, dreaming up things to do that didn’t really need doing. She had maybe one more day’s work there before everything was truly put to bed for the winter. She was trying to make it last.

She’d spent the afternoon harvesting the last of the autumn gourds. They weren’t perfect — most of the pretty ones had been collected the month before — but they would be welcome at the Lafayette Street shelter. Once she’d scoured the vines for every last specimen, she’d laid newspaper down on the remaining beds. She could have cleaned and oiled the tools, but she decided to save the job for next time, buying her one more day at the garden.

Mary O’Rourke had been there for an hour earlier in the day, and she and Aria had discussed plans to expand the garden. The board had submitted three different proposals to the city council after the first set had been rejected, and they were both hopeful the last one would make it through the approval process. The prospect made Aria’s heart lift a little with hope. The extra space would allow them to expand their donations of fruits and vegetables to area shelters. That it would also give Aria more to do was just a bonus.

She’d ushered Mary to the curb where her grandson, Theo, was already waiting. He’d lingered, offering Aria a ride in spite of the warm fall day, but she’d made a quick exit. If getting to know him was a bad idea before, it was an epically bad idea now. She’d headed back to the garden and stayed for another hour in the quiet before locking up.

She headed downtown, her mind returning to Primo’s meeting with Damian Cavallo the night before. She hadn’t had time in the immediate aftermath to replay the moment between them when he’d left. There hadn’t been room around Primo’s rage, Malcolm’s mission to coax him into an increasingly dangerous state of agitation. Aria had watched, helpless, trying to stay out of the way while strategizing a way out.

The world was full of men who raged. They were easy to control because they were motivated by something tangible. It might be ego or greed or lust or any number of other things. In the end, it didn’t matter. Once you knew what a man wanted, what drove him, it wasn’t difficult to figure out how to make him hurt.

Damian Cavallo was a different kind of man.

Primo had always had enemies — you didn’t burn bridges like he did without making enemies. But Aria had a feeling making an enemy of Damian Cavallo would be the biggest mistake of her brother’s life.

She’d gotten good at observing. Had learned to bide her time, watching, collecting information, sifting through it for a strategy that would allow her to escape volatile situations unscathed, that would allow Primo to escape them.

But if Damian was motivated by anything, she hadn’t been able to see it, and if she couldn’t see it, she doubted Primo would be able to do so through the red veil of rage behind his eyes. Malcolm might have been able to see it, but she didn’t think so. He was like Primo — motivated by power instead of ego but motivated nonetheless.

The smart thing to do would be to take Damian’s offer — whatever it was — but convincing Primo would be an uphill battle and trying to sway Malcolm would be pointless. Neither of them would see past their own desire to the truth.

She was still trying to figure out how to approach the subject with Primo when she descended the stairs into the subway. Her worry for him was an ever-present loop in her mind, but there was a lingering echo underneath it, the image of Damian Cavallo turning on the stairs as he left the club, his long stare hitting her like a freight train in all the parts of her body she’d feared were permanently asleep.

She’d been trying to banish the image ever since. As she lay in bed, grasping desperately for the oblivion of sleep. When she woke up in the morning, the raw energy of his physical presence like the warning of an earthquake about to crack open the ground. Her time in the garden had come closest to offering her a respite from the assault of his memory, but even then he’d been standing in the background, a fever dream she couldn’t shake. She wasn’t foolish enough to think it was anything but lust — but it was still a distraction she couldn’t afford.

The train rattled to a stop on the track and she boarded with the rest of the crowd, standing near the doors as it jolted into motion. She felt the movement in her body in a new way, something that had been happening ever since Damian had walked into the club. It was like she’d been operating in some dark corner of her body and now was suddenly aware that there was more to her.

That she had limbs and a beating heart and skin stretched over bone.

It was an unwelcome kind of awareness, and yet it seemed to be out of her control, like a switch that had been flipped somewhere in her body, the primal flicker of fire that wouldn’t allow her to return to what she’d known — and what she hadn’t — before she’d seen him.

She was grateful for the crowd as the train stopped and started, grateful for the push of people getting on and off the train as they made their way into the Financial District. It was all very normal, and by the time she got off at her stop, she’d almost managed to convince herself that her body’s awakening had been a fluke. A trick of the moment that would fall into the past. Just like Damian Cavallo.

That’s what their meeting had been — a split second when their paths had collided. Whatever attraction she’d felt was irrelevant. Her number one priority was protecting Primo. Malcolm Gatti wasn’t the only one who held sway over him. Her influence had waned in recent years, but it wasn’t entirely dead. She would talk to him tonight. Make his favorite dinner and appeal to him to consider Damian Cavallo’s offer. She didn’t know how much money Damian had offered, but Primo had been stashing large sums of money for years. They would take whatever Damian offered and leave, maybe start over someplace warm where she could garden year-round. Someplace where Malcolm wouldn’t be a constant whisper in Primo’s ear.

It was dark when she ascended the subway stairs to the street, a chill in the air that reminded her the holidays were just around the corner. Who knew where she and Primo would be then? Maybe on a beach somewhere, holding drinks with umbrellas and decorating a palm tree with colored lights.

She stopped at the little market on the way home and picked up the ingredients for chicken parmigiana, Primo’s favorite of their mother’s recipes. She added a loaf of bread, plus greens and red onion for a salad, and made her way home feeling almost optimistic.

It lasted all of ten minutes — right up until she stepped into the apartment and heard Malcolm’s voice coming from the living room.

She set down her keys and moved cautiously down the hall. The room was barely illuminated by a dim lamp on one of the end tables, the lights of the city twinkling beyond the windows. Primo was sprawled out on the sofa, Malcolm at the other end, maintaining the kind of practiced slouch that was meant to put Primo at ease even as he stayed alert for every opportunity to turn things his way. Aria would have been surprised if he’d even had a drink from the empty bottle of whiskey on the coffee table, the half-full bottle next to it.

They didn’t seem to be aware of her presence, and she waited, listening to the conversation she seemed to have interrupted.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Malcolm said. “We take out something that matters to him. Something that hurts.”

“What about Vitale?” Primo asked.

“Fuck Vitale,” Malcolm said. “He had his chance at New York. He abandoned it.”

“You might be right,” Primo said, the ice in his glass clinking as he took another drink. “Stay on the offense.”

“Exactly.”

She shifted on her feet and the grocery bag rustled in her hands. Primo looked up, surprised but not unhappy to see her. He was too drunk for anger. Eventually he’d pass through the sweet spot and come out the other side filled with paranoia, but she was in the clear for now.

“Ari! Come in. Have a drink.” He waved in the general direction of the bottles on the coffee table.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m going to make dinner. Mama’s chicken parmigiana.”

“Perfect!” Primo said, taking a drink from the glass cradled in his hand. “Malcolm can stay.”

Aria silently cursed herself. She’d hoped the food would motivate Primo to call it a night with Malcolm. She should have known her brother would invite him to dinner instead.

“If you insist,” Malcolm said, raising his glass.

She turned toward the kitchen, not wanting Primo to see the annoyance in her face. It would only antagonize him, and she was still holding out hope that she would be able to convince him to negotiate with Damian Cavallo. If not during dinner, then maybe afterward when Malcolm went home.

She started unpacking the food, lining everything up on the counter. She didn’t notice Malcolm standing in the doorway of the kitchen until she moved to grab the casserole dish in one of the big cabinet drawers.

“You don’t like me, do you, Ari?” he said.

His use of Primo’s nickname for her made her want to crawl out of her skin. She avoided his eyes, glanced into the living room to find that Primo had left the room.

“What I think about you doesn’t matter,” she said, putting the casserole dish on the counter and unpacking the chicken. She was rinsing it under cold water when she felt movement directly behind her.

Turning around was instinctual, a protective mechanism to protect her from the intruder she sensed in her personal space. She came up against the wall of Malcolm’s chest, his face looming over her.

“What if I said it did?” he asked.

His breath was sour, his thighs close enough to brush against hers. She resisted the urge to gag.

“Get away from me,” she said, her voice low.

“You’ve gotten feisty.” He leaned down, and she tried to back away from him, remembered she was up against the counter. “I like that.”

She was paralyzed, the bulge in his pants pressed against her stomach as he moved his lips toward her ear. She was still trying to process what was happening, still trying to prompt herself to move, when she felt the vicious sink of his teeth into the soft flesh of her earlobe.

White hot pain shot through her body and her hands came up, smearing his face with the residue of raw chicken in a blind effort to get him away from her. He grimaced, his hand coming down hard and fast against her cheek.

“Bitch!” he snarled, wiping at the slimy residue on his mouth.

She took advantage of the moment to duck under his arm, her eyes burning with unshed tears as she rushed down the hall. She had almost made it to her room when Primo stepped out of the bathroom and into the hall, hie expression changing to one of surprise when he saw her.

“What are you — ”

She flew into her room and slammed the door. When the door was securely locked, she paced to the standing mirror near her bureau. Her cheek was bright red, a trickle of blood making its way from her ear lobe down her neck. She pulled some tissues out of the box on her dresser and dabbed at it as tears spilled over onto her cheeks.

It wasn’t enough. She didn’t want to just wipe away the blood; she wanted to erase the moment from her memory. Wanted to forget the press of Malcolm’s erection as he’d leaned over her, the wetness of his mouth in the moment before he’d used his teeth to hurt her.

Rushing into the private bath attached to her room, she turned the water on hot and started stripping. By the time she was down to her underwear the bathroom was filled with steam. She sat on the lid of the toilet, sobs breaking free from somewhere deep in her body.

She was dimly aware that the tears weren’t just about tonight, although that was bad enough. It was all the tip-toeing she’d been doing for years, holding everything together while Primo spun out of control, working around Malcolm when by all rights, he should have had no part in their lives.

In her life.

She’d known he wasn’t a good man from the beginning. Had known he was dangerous to her brother. But she was only now fully understanding the depths of his depravity and the way he could become a danger to her as well.

She heard his words in the living room. We take out something that matters to him. Something that hurts.

She didn’t know Damian Cavallo. Didn’t know what Primo and Malcolm might take from him that hurt. But she knew it would be the beginning of a war none of them would survive.

Herself included.

She’d been foolish to think she could reason with Primo. He was too enthralled with Malcolm, which meant there was only one person left to whom she could appeal. One person who might listen to her, might at least give her more time to reason with Primo. It hardly mattered that Damian Cavallo was her brother’s enemy.

He was her only hope.

And now she had a warning to trade.