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"Exactly."

Lorenzo pours another finger of whiskey and doesn't drink it.

"There's more. He has cancer. Pancreatic, our doctor contact thinks, based on the medication moving through the prison pharmacy. Advanced."

"So maybe he's dying," I say.

"Maybe," Lorenzo says. "Or maybe he's tired. He finds out his son sold girls under his own name, loses him, loses the family in a federal raid. Prison might look like rest."

"Or," Nico says from the window, "a man with nothing left to lose and money already distributed is the most dangerous version of Enzo Basile we've ever dealt with."

No one argues.

Nico's paranoia has an irritating habit of turning out right.

Bruno crushes the cigarette in the saucer and looks at me through the last of the smoke.

"That's why the transfer matters. Elio knew the agency, the routes, the players. Somebody gave the Basiles your airport timing, and it wasn't him. He was already in federal custody with his hands zip-tied to a table."

His jaw tightens.

"He knows who else was inside. He might be the only person alive who does."

Bruno leans back, and the chair creaks under him.

"Twenty minutes, Valentino. Get me a name."

I think about Amanda upstairs, laughing, alive, unaware that in five days I'm going to sit across from the man who lied his way into her bed and onto her protection detail.

I think about the rope marks across my back.

My father's watch on my wrist.

The road Luca bled on.

"If he knows, I'll get it," I say.

CHAPTER FORTY

Amanda

The knock lands in the middle of our second toast, and Vittoria and I both freeze with our glasses halfway up like we've been caught running a speakeasy out of her childhood bedroom.

"It's open," Vittoria calls.

Valentino fills the doorway the way he fills every doorway, seeming too large for the space somehow. His eyes find me on the bed, wine in hand, legs tucked under me, and something in his expression turns quiet and hungry at the same time.

It does absolutely criminal things to my pulse.

"Vittoria." He nods at her, then looks back at me. "Is it all right if I take Amanda to my room?"

Vittoria sets her glass down very slowly.

I know that expression. That's the expression she wore right before she told Pietro his new security protocol had the structural integrity of wet bread.

"Is it all right," she repeats.

Then she starts laughing. Full-bodied, head tipped back, delighted in a way that makes Valentino's mouth flatten by one careful degree.