Rico arrived nineteen minutes later.

Clara heard the Escalade before she saw it—the low growl of the engine stopping hard at the curb. Then footsteps on the stairs, taking them two at a time. Then a knock: three short raps.

"It's me."

She opened the door.

He was in the gray T-shirt again, a dark jacket thrown over it, hair still rumpled from sleep. Dante loomed behind him on the landing. Neither of them, she noticed, was hiding anything under his jacket tonight.

Rico's eyes went past her to Evan, sitting at the kitchen table with a bag of frozen peas pressed to his cheek.

He walked in without asking. Crossed the kitchen. Crouched in front of her brother the way Clara had taught him to crouch in front of Leo.

"Let me see."

Evan lowered the peas.

Rico studied the bruise, the split lip, the scrape along his jaw. His face didn't change. But Clara saw his hand, resting on his knee, slowly close into a fist.

"Who?"

Evan looked at Clara.

"Tell him," she said.

So Evan told him. The bodega. The sandwich. The five hundred dollars. The questions. The crow tattoo.

"His friend called him Sal," Evan said.

Behind Rico, Dante went very still.

"Sal Greco," Dante said quietly. "Has to be. Works for Tommy Caruso."

Rico nodded slowly. "Anything else?"

Evan swallowed. "He got a phone call. He called the guy Nico."

The kitchen went silent.

Rico stayed crouched in front of Evan for a long moment. Then he stood, and when he turned to Clara, his expression was carved from stone.

"Get your things," he said. "Both of you. You're coming to the house."

"Rico—"

"There are a hundred Nicos in Brooklyn," he said flatly. "Caruso has a nephew named Nico. Caruso's bookie is named Nico. Half the men on Eighty-Sixth Street are named Nico."

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to." He met her eyes. "I saw your face."

He turned to Dante. "Call Tony. I want two cars on this building until further notice. And find out where Sal Greco sleeps."

"Boss—"

"I'm not going to touch him." Rico's voice was flat. "Not yet. I just want to know."

Dante nodded and stepped out onto the landing, phone already at his ear.

Evan looked from Rico to Clara and back again. For all his height, he suddenly seemed very young.

"Mr. Moretti," he said. "I didn't tell him anything. I swear."

Rico looked at him for a long moment.

"I know you didn't," he said. "If you had, he wouldn't have needed to hit you."

Evan blinked.

"That's a compliment, kid," Rico said. "Most grown men I know would've taken the five hundred."

He held out his hand.

Evan stared at it. Then he shook it, awkwardly, the way teenagers shake hands when they've only ever seen it done in movies.

Clara went into the bedroom to pack. Her hands were steady now, steadier than they'd been all night. She threw clothes into a bag without looking at them—Evan's hoodie, her toothbrush, the folder with his college essays.

When she came back out, Rico was standing by the refrigerator, looking at the lighthouse drawing Evan had made in third grade.

"You kept this," he said.

"I keep everything he makes."

Rico didn't say anything. But when they went down the stairs to the waiting car, she noticed he walked on the outside, between her brother and the street.

---

Evan fell asleep in the guest room across from Clara's around four. Rosa, woken by the commotion, had cleaned his cuts with iodine and muttered prayers in Italian over every single one.

Clara found Rico in the kitchen.

He was standing at the window with his back to her. The back garden lay silver and black in the moonlight, the empty fountain catching the glow from the house.

"I'm sorry," he said, before she could speak.

She stopped.

"You had one condition that was about you." He didn't turn. "Your brother. Nobody from my world comes near him. I agreed. I gave you my word." His voice was low and rough. "And three weeks later, he's sitting in your kitchen bleeding."

"You didn't do this."

"Somebody did it because of me. That's the same thing."

Clara crossed the kitchen and stood beside him at the window.

"Your cousin asked me about the men on the door," she said quietly. "The day he brought the cannoli. He asked when you work late. He asked who stands outside."

Rico's jaw flexed.

"Nico has asked me those questions himself a hundred times. He's family. He looks out for the house."

"Then why does he need to ask me?"

He turned to her then. In the half dark, his eyes were black and furious and—beneath the fury—frightened.

"Do you understand what you're saying?" he said. "Do you understand what it would mean?"

"I'm not saying anything. I'm asking."

"In my family, a question like that is a death sentence. For somebody." He stepped closer. "If I go to my mother, to my uncles, and I say, the waitress thinks Nico is talking to the Carusos, someone is going to die. Maybe him. Maybe you. That's not a line I can uncross."

Clara held his gaze.

"Then don't cross it," she said. "Just look."

They were standing very close now. Close enough that she could see the pulse beating at the base of his throat. Close enough that she could feel the heat coming off him in the cold kitchen.

For one long, suspended second, neither of them moved.

Then Rico stepped back.

"Go to sleep, Clara," he said hoarsely. "Your brother stays as long as he needs. Dante will drive him to school. Nobody touches him again. I swear it on my son."

He left her alone in the kitchen with her heart beating far too fast.

---