I didn't answer him. I walked past him, out into the drizzle, feeling the cold water soak through my linen shirt, forcing my legs to maintain an even, unhurried pace all the way back across the courtyard to the main house.

I didn't go back to the study. I went down to the wine cellar in the sub-basement—the only room on the property with solid limestone walls fourteen inches thick and no junction boxes for Dante's surveillance system.

I clicked on the bare overhead bulb, pulled an antique cassette dictaphone from my father's old humidor beneath the Chianti racks, and dropped the micro-cassette inside.

I pressed play.

The tape hissed with tape hiss and background static. Then my father’s voice filled the stone room, ragged and shallow, punctuated by the rhythmic wheezing of the oxygen concentrator he had used during his final months.

*"If you’re listening to this, Alejandro, then Carlo has already panicked, and Dante has already made his move on the port authority leases.*

*Don't look at the manifests in the office. The real numbers are in the box at Hudson National. But that isn't why I left the key with Sofia's mother.*

*Twenty-five years ago, before Dante took over the security details, he brought a man into the docks named Leo Varga. Varga was a chemist from Prague. Dante told me Varga was cooking methamphetamine in the dry docks. That was a lie. Varga was synthesizing organophosphates and concentrated food extracts for private contracts.*

*When I had my first stroke in twenty-eighteen, the doctors found peanut protein in my blood. I haven't eaten a legume since nineteen-seventy-four. Dante was in my kitchen every Sunday morning, making the espresso with the silver pot he bought in Milan.*

*He didn't want me dead until the leases were transferred into the holding corporation. He wanted me sick. He wanted me dependent. He wanted Carlo terrified of going to prison, and he wanted you looking at the Russians instead of the man sitting at the foot of your bed.*

*If you survive him, do not go to the council. The council belongs to Dante's cousins now. Go to the girl. Sofia's mother took Varga’s lab logs when we burned the warehouse on Pier 42. They are stitched into the lining of the family bible in the church on Fourth Street.*

*Kill him, Alejandro. Or he will put you in the ground next to me and tell everyone at the wake that your heart was too weak to carry the name."*

The tape ended with a sharp mechanical click.

I stood in the cold dark of the cellar, the yellow legal pad trembling slightly in my hand.

My father hadn't died of a heart attack. He had died of an induced reaction that simulated cardiac failure—the exact same sensation of tightness, burning, and sudden respiratory arrest that had dropped me onto the carpet of my study forty-eight hours ago while Dante stood by the door, pretending to search his pockets for a phone.

And Emma had been there.

Emma, whom Dante had brought to the house that morning under the pretense of Nico needing an emergency meeting.

Dante hadn't given Emma that EpiPen to save my life.

He had given it to her to ensure I survived just long enough to sign the power of attorney over to him before Carlo was arraigned. But Emma had panicked, plunged the needle into my leg five minutes too early, and ruined the timetable.