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"He put something in her drink at the palazzo because she asked questions about a bruised girl at a photo shoot. He took her to a room with two other men. They photographed her while she couldn't move. Put their hands on her. Told her it was a reminder to stay quiet."

Enzo doesn't blink.

"The girls she asked about were coming through Agenzia Luce. Forty brought in each season. Thirty sent home. The rest sold. Eastern European girls. North African girls. Papers held. Housing controlled. Aldo's operation. Aldo's money. Hidden from you through shell companies because he knew exactly what you would do if you found out."

For a while, Enzo says nothing.

The lamp hums overhead. Somewhere outside, a dog barks twice and stops.

"I learned about the agency three days ago," he says. "My nephew told me with a gun in his mouth."

His mouth twists around the next words.

"Selling women."

He looks down at his hands, then back at me.

"We don't do that. We have never done that. If Aldo had stood in front of me alive and admitted it, I would have dealt with him myself. In my house. In my way."

"I believe you."

"Good." His eyes harden. "Then believe this too. It changes nothing."

"I know."

"He was mine. Whatever he was, he was mine. You don't take a man's son, hand him the reason after, and call the debt paid."

His hands tighten once on the edge of the table.

"The reason is good," he says. "The debt stands.”

"I know," I say.

If someone had put Vittoria on a floor like that, Bruno wouldn't have cared why. Not at first. He would have wanted the man dead, then the house that made him, then every coward who stood close enough to let it happen.

Enzo is wrong about his son.

He isn't wrong about the debt.

He studies me for another moment, and his mouth tightens.

"You'll have a long time to regret it," he says. "I promise you that much."

"I don't regret it." I look him in the eye. "I'd open that door again tomorrow."

A muscle jumps under his eye.

He turns toward the door, then stops with one hand on the frame, his back to me.

"Five minutes," he says. "I'll leave you with her for five minutes. Say what you need to say. Then my men move you."

The guards step out after him. The door stays cracked. They can hear every word.

Still, for the first time since they brought me in, no one stands between us.

I turn around.

Amanda has stopped screaming. Rope cuts into her wrists. Her face is wet. Her eyes stay on me like she understands exactly what I traded and hates me for making her watch it.