Marco was still on the estate.

Roman had not told him to leave.

That had been an oversight — or perhaps, Roman thought now, it hadn't been an oversight at all.

Perhaps some part of him had already suspected.

He found Marco in the kitchen, sitting at the long staff table with a cup of coffee, jacket off, looking like a man waiting for a bus.

He looked up when Roman walked in.

He didn't stand.

That told Roman everything he needed to know about how this conversation was going to go.

"You've been working for Marchetti," Roman said.

Marco wrapped both hands around his cup.

"I've been working for whoever paid me."

"Helena paid you."

"Helena paid me to watch the women.

Marchetti paid me to watch Helena." He shrugged, a small economical movement.

"It's not complicated."

"How long?"

"Four years."

Roman pulled out a chair across the table and sat down.

He didn't raise his voice.

He didn't need to.

"What did you give them?"

"Financial movement.

Personnel changes.

The gala guest list, twice a year." Marco looked at his coffee.

"Nothing operational.

Nothing that got anyone hurt."

"You gave them access to Nora and Sophie."

"I kept them alive.

If I'd wanted to use them as leverage, I had three years of opportunity."

"But someone else in Marchetti's organization did want to use them."

Marco was quiet.

"The names Enzo sent me," Roman said.

"Yours is first.

Who are the others?"

Marco looked up.

For the first time, something moved behind his eyes — not guilt, exactly, but the particular discomfort of a man who has been running two directions for a long time and has finally run out of road.

"If I give you those names, I need a guarantee."

"You're not in a position to negotiate guarantees."

"I'm in a position to stay quiet, which is worse for you than talking." Marco set his cup down.

"Two of the names on that list are inside your own operation.

Not Marchetti's people.

Yours.

Men you trust.

Men who have been feeding information in both directions for longer than I have."

Roman's jaw tightened.

"Names."

"Guarantee first.

I walk away.

I disappear.

You never hear from me again and I never speak about anything I know."

"And if I say no?"

Marco looked at him steadily.

"Then you spend the next year trying to find the two men yourself, and while you're looking, they keep feeding information out, and you keep wondering which decisions are being compromised." He picked up his cup again.

"I'm not your enemy, Roman.

I'm a man who made a practical choice in a complicated situation.

Give me the exit and I'll give you the names."

The kitchen was quiet.

Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked.

Sophie was still asleep in the study.

Nora was with her.

Roman thought about his daughter's face when she'd held up the photograph.

*He said to keep it secret from Mommy.* Three years old and already keeping secrets to survive.

"You have twenty-four hours to be out of the country," Roman said.

"If I ever see your name connected to anything in my world again, the guarantee ends.

Do you understand that?"

"Completely."

"The names."

Marco said two names.

Roman recognized both of them immediately.

One had been with him for six years.

The other had been his father's man before that.

He stood up.

He didn't say anything else to Marco.

There was nothing else to say.

He walked back down the corridor toward the study, and with each step the shape of the last three years rearranged itself in his mind — every decision that had felt slightly off, every piece of information that had arrived too late or too early, every moment when the ground had shifted just slightly beneath his feet and he hadn't been able to say why.

Now he could say why.

He pushed open the study door.

Nora was sitting on the floor beside the sofa where Sophie slept, her back against the cushions, her knees drawn up.

She looked up when he came in.

"Marco?" she said.

"Marchetti's informant.

Four years.

He gave me two more names — men inside my own organization."

Nora absorbed this.

"What are you going to do?"

"Tonight, nothing.

They don't know that I know.

That's the only advantage I have and I'm not going to waste it by moving too fast." He sat down on the floor beside her, his back against the sofa next to hers.

It was not the kind of thing Roman D'Angelo did — sat on floors in his father's study at two in the morning — but the night had already broken most of its usual rules.

"In the morning I'll start making calls.

Quietly."

"And Helena?"

"The audit starts Monday.

Whatever the lawyers find, she'll face it." He paused.

"She's still my mother.

That doesn't disappear.

But it doesn't excuse anything either."

Nora looked at Sophie's sleeping face above them.

"She asked me once — Sophie did — why we moved so much.

She was barely two and a half.

I told her we were on an adventure." Her voice was very quiet.

"I didn't know what else to say."

"You kept her safe."

"I kept her moving.

There's a difference." She turned her head to look at him.

"You said that to Helena earlier.

About protection and control."

"I know."

"It applies to me too.

Some of the things I told Sophie to keep her from being afraid — they were true, but they weren't the whole truth." She paused.

"I'm going to have to learn how to do that differently.

How to let her feel safe without—" She stopped.

"Without making her carry things she shouldn't have to carry."

Roman was quiet for a moment.

"She held onto that photograph for months."

"I know."

"She kept it secret because she thought it was the only piece of her father she had." He looked at the ceiling.

"I have a lot of time to make up for."

"So do I."

Above them, Sophie stirred.

Her eyes opened — the slow, unfocused opening of a child not fully awake — and she looked down at the two of them on the floor below her, and something in her small face settled, the way a face settles when it finds what it was looking for.

"Are you sleeping on the floor?" she said.

"Yes," Roman said.

"Why?"

"Because you had the sofa."

Sophie considered this with the gravity of someone evaluating a complex philosophical position.

Then she climbed down from the sofa, dragging Roman's jacket with her, and inserted herself between them with the absolute confidence of a child who has decided where she belongs.

She pulled the jacket over all three of them.

"Better," she announced, and closed her eyes again.

Nora looked at Roman over the top of Sophie's head.

He looked back.

Neither of them spoke.

There was nothing that needed to be said that the moment hadn't already said more clearly.

But in Roman's pocket, his phone was already showing a new message — from a number he recognized as one of the two men Marco had named.

*We need to talk.

Tonight.

It's about the Marchetti meeting.

Don't bring anyone.*