Clara went home on her days off.

Rico had offered to move Evan into the house. She had refused. Her fourth condition still stood, and she meant to keep it.

So every Sunday night and Monday, she rode the R train back to Sunset Park, climbed the three flights of stairs, and became a big sister again—checking homework, filling the fridge, signing permission slips, nagging about college essays.

The apartment felt smaller every time. Quieter. Clara noticed that the landlord had finally fixed the buzzer.

She noticed, too, that Evan had changed.

He was quieter. He kept his phone face-down on the table. When it buzzed, he flipped it over, read the screen, and shoved it into his pocket without answering.

"Who's that?" Clara asked on the third Monday.

"Nobody."

"Nobody texts a lot."

"It's a group chat, Clara. God." He picked up his backpack. "I'm going to Marcus's."

"It's ten o'clock at night."

"So?"

The door slammed behind him.

Clara stood alone in the kitchen. She told herself it was normal. He was seventeen. He was allowed to have secrets.

She told herself that until midnight, when Evan still wasn't home and wasn't answering his phone.

She called Marcus's mother at twelve fifteen. Evan had left at eleven.

She called Evan again. Voicemail.

She stood at the window and watched the street—the bodega's neon sign, a man walking a pit bull, a cab idling at the light. Every pair of headlights made her heart jump. None of them stopped.

At twelve forty, she put on her coat. She got as far as the landing before she made herself go back inside. If he came home and she wasn't there, he'd go out looking for her. That was how they worked. It had always been the two of them, covering for each other, waiting up for each other.

She sat down at the kitchen table, switched off the light, and waited in the dark, the way she had when he was nine and wandered off at Coney Island and she'd found him an hour later crying under the boardwalk.

She had promised herself then she would never lose him again.

She checked her phone. Twelve fifty-two.

She thought about calling Rico.

She didn't. Not yet. Her fourth condition had been about keeping his world away from her brother, and some stubborn part of her believed that if she called him now, she'd be inviting it in.

---

He came back at one fifteen.

Clara was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark. When the lock turned, she switched on the light.

Evan froze in the doorway.

His lip was split. A bruise was blooming along his left cheekbone.

"What happened?"

"Nothing. I fell."

"Evan."

"I fell, okay?"

Clara stood. She crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of him, close enough to see that his hands were shaking. Close enough to hear his breathing—quick, shallow, the way it used to be when he was seven and the walls were closing in.

She didn't reach for him. She remembered her own rules.

"Sit down," she said quietly. "Breathe with me. Then tell me."

He held out for almost a minute. Then his face crumpled, and he sat down hard on the kitchen chair and put his head in his hands.

"There's this guy," he said. "Not from school. He hangs around outside the bodega on Fifth. A couple weeks ago, he starts talking to me. Says he knows my sister works for the Morettis."

Clara's blood went cold.

"He was nice at first. Bought me a sandwich. Said he had a job for me. Easy money. Five hundred bucks." Evan's voice cracked. "All I had to do was ask you some questions. When you're at the house. When Rico Moretti's at home. What time he leaves. Which men are on the door."

The same questions.

Clara heard them again in Nico's easy, laughing voice. Did he still keep the same men on the door?

"What did you tell him?" she asked.

"Nothing! I swear, Clara. I told him to get lost. So tonight he and his friend followed me from Marcus's, and they—" Evan gestured at his face. "They said next time it wouldn't be me. They said maybe next time they'd come find you."

Clara sat down across from him because her legs wouldn't hold her anymore.

"What did he look like?"

"I don't know. Thirties. Tattoo on his neck. A bird, I think. Or a crow." Evan wiped his nose. "His friend called him Sal."

"Did he say who he worked for?"

"No." Evan hesitated. "But he got a phone call while he was buying me the sandwich. He said, 'Yeah, I'm working on it, Nico. Relax.'"

The kitchen went silent.

The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere down the block, a car alarm started and stopped.

"Clara?" Evan's voice sounded very young. "What's going on? Who's Nico?"

Clara looked at her little brother—the boy she had raised, the boy she had promised would never be touched by Rico Moretti's world—and felt the floor of her life tilt beneath her.

She had made a deal with a man who promised he would try harder than anyone had ever tried.

It hadn't been enough.

"Pack a bag," she said.

"What? Why?"

"Because you're not staying here tonight."

She picked up her phone. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to try three times to find the number.

He answered on the first ring, even though it was nearly two in the morning.

"Clara."

"I need you," she said. "Right now. It's my brother."

There was no hesitation. No questions.

"Don't open the door to anyone," Rico said. "I'm coming myself."

---