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"She's planning a wedding?"

Pietro laughs into his glass.

"Of course she is," Dante says. "Women like Vittoria don't survive this long by waiting for men to become useful."

Bruno doesn't smile. He keeps his eyes on me. I hold his stare for a beat, then nod. "I walk out." He nods back.

That's the contract. Two nods between cousins, worth more than anything a lawyer could put on paper.

Nico turns from the window. He has the stare of a man who finds problems before anyone else admits there is one.

"Amanda's going with you?"

"Yes."

"To Sicily."

"To Italy," I say. "For now."

I turn the glass on my knee. "Her work is in Chicago. Vittoria's here. The life she built is here. We haven't talked about where we're living."

"You haven't talked about it," Pietro repeats.

"There hasn't been a calm hour to talk about anything. Every conversation we've had has happened between a kidnapping, a hospital, and someone trying to kill one of us."

Pietro looks at me for a long moment.

Then he laughs.

Properly laughs. Head back. Shoulders moving. Like the idea is so absurd even he can't keep a straight face.

"Cazzo. Listen to us." He gestures around with his glass. "Two years ago this family was a pack of angry men walking around killing people. That was the whole operation. Now look. Wives. Children. Children on the way. Lorenzo cooks Sunday dinner like somebody's nonna, and Valentino fucking Conti is sitting here worried about real estate."

Lorenzo gives him a look. "I cook better than our nonna."

"Our nonna was a terrible cook."

"Then the comparison is insulting."

Pietro points at him. "That's exactly my point. We have domestic arguments now. Life is ridiculous."

I let myself smile, because Pietro's right.

The man laughing in that chair spent years wanting to die and forgot how to want anything else. Now he's here, drinking Lorenzo's funeral whiskey, talking about children and Sunday dinner like the words don't scare him.

"What happens with Enzo?" I ask.

The room settles back into business.

Lorenzo sets the bottle down. "That's the strange part. He's not fighting."

"No motions," Dante says. "No delays. No usual theater."

"He fired his lawyers," Lorenzo adds. "All of them. The Palermo firm. Men his family kept on retainer for thirty years."

"His soldiers aren't talking either," Bruno says. "Not from fear. Our people say he paid every one of them out before the raid. Severance. Like he was closing the doors."

"A Don doesn't pay severance," Dante says. "A Don promises you'll be taken care of and lets you wonder by whom."