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“Careful, Accardi,” he manages. “You’re letting people see what matters to you. That’s how men like us get hurt.” His eyes flick to me, an ugly scowl on his face. “Everybody in this room just learned exactly where to push.”

It’s a threat, a real one, under the bravado. The air goes thin, and for a second I think this is it, this is where it turns from words into something else.

“Luca.” A new voice, old and dry and amused, cuts clean across the standoff. “You’re making a scene. Now, let an old man through.”

The crowd parts, and a different kind of danger walks into the middle of it. The man is in his late seventies. His head is topped with thick white hair, his face the color of cured leather, his eyes missing absolutely nothing. He’s not big and he’s not armed, but you can tell by the way he carries himself, the way the room rearranges itself around him, that he is from the generation that built all of it, the one even Enzo defers to.

“Vittorio Manfredi,” Enzo says with real respect in his tone, the first I’ve heard him give anyone. “You honor us.”

“I honor the bar. The company’s a bonus.” Manfredi’s sharp old eyes move from Enzo to Luca and back, reading the tension in a glance. “Luca, you’re loud tonight. You’re loud most nights lately. A loud man is a man who doesn’t have his house in order, telling everyone it’s fine.” He smiles, all teeth. “Go home, son. You’ve made your impression. It wasn’t the one you wanted, but you made it.”

And the amazing thing is, Luca listens.

“Yeah,” he says, glancing around as if counting just how many eyes are on him. “I have an early morning. Have a good night, Mr. Manfredi.”

On his way past, he leans in close enough that only I can hear him. “Did the little one like his ears?”

Luca throws me one last look on the way out, and there’s murder in it, the real thing, cold and patient and angry.

Then he’s gone.

The room exhales. The music, which I hadn’t noticed stopping, returns to a normal volume. People remember they were having conversations. The night continues.

Manfredi turns to Enzo, and his face softens into an almost grandfatherly expression, though I don’t trust it for a second.

“He’s not wrong about one thing,” the old man says.

“Your house,” he goes on. “People are talking.” Vittorio plucks a glass off a tray with a surprisingly steady hand for a man his age. “You know I know your father, Enzo. Ran with him when we were younger, much younger than you.” He sips his drink and smiles fondly. “Wild, terrible days. And the best of my life.”

He pauses, and his eyes grow sharper. “How is your father, anyway? No one’s seen him. Not at the spring meeting, not at Sal’s funeral. It’s been… what, a year? More?”

“He keeps to himself these days,” Enzo says, smoothly, carefully. “His health isn’t the best.”

“His health.” Manfredi repeats it without inflection, a light echo.

“Give him my regards, then,” Manfredi says. “Tell him Vittorio asked after him.” He sips his drink. “Tell him, too, that a Don who can’t produce his own father starts to look like a Don who’s hiding something. The elders notice these things, Enzo. They’re old and they’re bored and noticing is most of what we’ve got left.” The grandfatherly mask falls off. “But that’s tomorrow’s worry. Tonight…” He turns to me and bows his head a courtly inch. “You didn’t introduce me to the dangerous woman, Enzo. Where are your manners?”

“Vittorio Manfredi,” Enzo says. “Ms. Stevie Callahan.”

“Callahan.” He says my name like he’s trying it on for size. He does one pass over me with his eyes, but it’s not like the way Luca does it, that awful crawl. He takes my hand, raises it with great care. “I’ve heard about you. You’re the one who can frighten grown men with just a notepad.”

I raise an eyebrow. “A pleasure to meet you. I didn’t realize I had a reputation.”

“Word travels,” he says cryptically. “Anyway, it’s a good thing. This city needs more people Luca Santini is afraid of. We have a bit of a shortage at the moment.”

He releases my hand, lifts his glass an inch in something like a toast, and drifts back into the crowd as smoothly as he came out of it.

Enzo doesn’t say a word. He turns, takes my face in both hands, right there in the middle of the room, in front of the elders and the politicians and every phone in the place, and kisses me.

Not a polite kiss. Not a question. The kind of kiss that tells a whole room the argument is over and he won it.

When he lets me go, the people around us have very carefully found something else to look at.

“You didn’t ask,” I say. It comes out nowhere near as indignant as I want it to.

“No.” His thumb drags once along my lower lip. “Luca just told this room you were a question. Now they know the answer.”

I should be furious. A month ago, a man deciding something like that for me would have had me halfway to the door.