"Where is Sofia?" I asked, keeping the shotgun steady on his breastbone.

"In the trunk of the town car," Dante replied, as casually as if he were telling me where he’d parked the tractor. "She’s breathing. For now. She was remarkably stubborn about the key to the safety deposit box. Said she gave it to a lawyer in Manhattan. But I knew she didn't. Sofia never trusted lawyers. Her mother taught her that much."

"Get away from the child, Dante."

Dante stood up slowly, brushing a speck of gray lint from the knee of his trousers. He looked at the shotgun, then up into my eyes. There was no fear in his face—only that cold, contemptuous pity he had always reserved for my father during the old man’s final, bedridden months.

"You think you’re your father, don't you?" Dante whispered. "You think because you have his chin and his temper that you have his iron. Your father was a butcher, Alejandro. He built this business on the backs of dockworkers he threw into the river when they asked for an extra dollar a ton. He used my brother-in-law to clear out the municipal inspectors, and then he burned Leo’s laboratory to the ground while Leo was inside it."

"Leo survived," I said, pulling the photograph from my pocket with my left hand and letting it drop onto the floor between us.

Dante glanced down at the paper. For the first time, his mouth hardened into a tight, ugly line.

"Leo spent twelve years in a burn ward in Zurich," Dante spat. "His hands look like melted tallow. That’s why he wears the blue rubber, Alejandro. To keep the skin from tearing when he handles the vials."

"You poisoned my father," I said. "For three years."

"I made him human," Dante hissed. "I watched him crawl from the bed to the commode like a dog. And I would have let you live, Alejandro. You were weak enough to manage. If you had just signed the power of attorney yesterday morning, you’d be sitting in a villa in Palm Beach right now with a million dollars a year from the lease dividends."

"And Emma?" I nodded toward the corner.

Dante looked at the four-year-old girl. His expression didn't soften; it curdled into something bitter and disgusted.

"The girl was an insurance policy that failed," Dante said. "Nico told her the medicine was a game. Told her that if you ever started choking on your dinner, she should be the hero. He thought if Emma saved your life, you’d never look into the kitchen accounts. He thought you’d make him a capo out of gratitude."

Dante took a half-step toward the workbench.

"Don't move," I said, thumbing the safety off the Remington. The click was loud enough to make Emma flinch.

"You won't shoot," Dante said, his voice dropping into that quiet, venomous certainty. "Not in front of the child. You have too much of your mother’s blood in you. That was always the family defect."

He lunged for the flare gun on the bench.