I came up from the cellar through the pantry stairs.

The house was dead silent, save for the hum of the commercial refrigerators and the steady drip of the kitchen faucet.

On the kitchen island sat a carton of almond milk, a cutting board with half a sliced lemon, and a pair of blue nitrile gloves tossed carelessly into the chrome trash bin.

In Chapter 4, Emma had told me about the man with the blue gloves who came to her mother’s apartment in Jersey City. She had said he was the one who taught her how to play the "doctor game"—how to count to five, take off the gray safety cap, and press the orange tip against the outside of someone's leg until it clicked.

I reached into the bin, pulled out the blue gloves with a pair of cooking tongs, and held them under the pendant light.

On the cuff of the left glove was a small white monogram stamped in heat-sealed vinyl: *D.V. Services.*

Dante Varga.

Dante hadn't just hired the chemist twenty-five years ago. Dante *was* the chemist’s brother-in-law. His real surname wasn't Bellini, and he wasn't a distant cousin from Palermo. He was Leo Varga’s financial partner, brought into the family under a dead man’s identity papers after the 1994 port explosion.

The rear kitchen door clicked open.

Mateo, Dante’s twenty-four-year-old nephew, stepped into the mudroom, his boots caked with yellow clay from the riverbank. He stopped dead when he saw me standing over the trash can with the tongs in my hand.

"Boss," Mateo stammered, pulling off his soaked baseball cap. "I was just... Dante told me to check the fuel levels on the launch."

"Where is Emma, Mateo?" I asked.

His eyes darted toward the hallway leading to the security annex. He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing.

"She’s with her mother, boss. At Crestview."

"Don't lie to me," I said, stepping around the island. "Nico didn't leave Newark on a taxi. Dante had him picked up at the curb. Where did they take them?"

Mateo reached for the small of his back, but he was too slow.

I didn't draw a gun. I grabbed the heavy cast-iron skillet from the Wolf range and smashed it across his jaw with all the weight left in my shoulders.

The sound was like an axe splitting green wood. Mateo hit the tile floor hard, his head bouncing against the baseboards, his Colt .38 sliding across the linoleum until it bumped against the toe of my boot.