I didn't go straight to Pier 42.

If Dante had Sofia and Emma at the boathouse, going in through the main gate with a shotgun was a death sentence for the child. Dante didn't leave loose ends when a contract went sour; he had burned three men inside a dry cleaner in Hoboken in nineteen-ninety-nine just to eliminate a sales tax audit.

I pulled up in front of Saint Anthony’s on Fourth Street.

The church was dark, its red-brick facade blackened by a century of coal smoke and diesel fumes from the rail yards. The side door was unlocked—Father Tom never locked it, not since my grandfather paid for the new copper roof in seventy-two.

The sanctuary smelled of beeswax, cold incense, and damp stone.

I walked down the center aisle, my wet boots squeaking against the terrazzo floor, until I reached the small side altar dedicated to Saint Jude.

Behind the altar rail, on a low walnut lectern, sat the leather-bound Douay-Rheims Bible my family had presented to the parish when my sister died of leukemia at seven years old.

I opened the heavy front cover.

The inside leaf was inscribed in faded gold leaf: *In Memory of Maria.*

I slid my fingers along the inside spine of the leather binding. Sure enough, the stitching had been removed and resealed with clear industrial adhesive. I jammed the point of my pocketknife into the gap and tore the spine open.

A bundle of thin, onion-skin paper tumbled out into my palm.

They weren't business ledgers. They were chemical import receipts, shipping manifests stamped by the Belgian customs office, and handwritten lab notes detailing the exact lethal dosages of arachis oil derivatives when introduced through inhalation versus oral ingestion.

Attached to the final page was a small color photograph.

It was taken twenty-five years ago on the deck of a cabin cruiser. My father was sitting in a deck chair, a glass of scotch in his hand, laughing.

Standing behind him, wearing a white linen shirt and a silver wristwatch, was Dante.

And standing next to Dante, with his arm wrapped around Dante’s shoulder, was the man from the Jersey City apartment—the man with the blue gloves. Leo Varga.

Across the back of the photograph, my father had written: *They belong to each other. God forgive me for bringing them into my home.*