At nine o'clock the following morning, the Romano organization's inner circle convened at the nondescript brick warehouse Dominic owned near the Navy Yard in Brooklyn. The facility ostensibly processed imported olive oil and industrial machinery; in reality, its subterranean level was shielded with copper mesh to defeat electronic surveillance and lined with twelve inches of poured concrete.

Marcus Vance was already seated at the head of the conference table, reviewing the balance sheets from the Atlantic City casino concessions. He looked impeccable: charcoal Brioni suit, crisp spread collar, his salt-and-pepper hair cut short and sharp.

"Dominic," Marcus said, standing and extending his hand with a broad, affectionate smile. "You look exhausted, brother. You shouldn't have driven in from the island today. I told you I'd handle the longshoremen's dispute."

Dominic looked at Marcus's outstretched hand. He looked at the silver signet ring on the pinky finger—an heirloom Marcus had claimed belonged to his late grandfather, but which Dominic now recognized from Sophie's drawing.

Dominic took the hand. His grip was steady, dry, and cold. "I couldn't sleep, Marcus. The house was noisy."

Marcus raised an eyebrow, pouring two glasses of sparkling water from a crystal carafe. "Noisy? The girls?"

"They were singing," Dominic said casually, taking his seat at the opposite end of the table.

Salvatore Gangi entered, quietly shutting the heavy steel blast doors behind him. He did not sit. He leaned against the reinforced doorframe, his hands folded across his belt.

Marcus paused, the rim of the glass hovering just before his lips. A micro-expression flickered across his eyes—a fleeting, razor-thin pulse of calculation, quickly replaced by a performance of delighted warmth. "Singing? Dominic, that's... that's a miracle. What were they singing?"

"'You Are My Sunshine,'" Dominic replied. "Isabelle used to sing it when she buckled them into their car seats."

Marcus lowered the glass. His smile remained, but it had grown taut around the corners. "Incredible. What brought that on? The new therapist from Columbia?"

"No," Dominic said, leaning his elbows on the table. "The new housekeeper. Grace. She was making pancakes. Nora laughed. Sophie sang. And then Sophie told Grace a secret."

The silence in the room dropped ten degrees. The hum of the industrial air scrubbers overhead seemed to amplify until it sounded like a turbine.

"Children say strange things when they start talking after a trauma," Marcus said smoothly. He leaned back in his leather swivel chair, reaching into his interior jacket pocket.

Salvatore’s hand shifted an inch toward his lapel.

Marcus produced a silver cigar cutter and a clipped Cuban cigar. "What did she say?"

"She said she remembered the maple leaves," Dominic said. "She remembered the sound of the red phone. And she remembered the man with the cross tattooed under his left eye."

Marcus held the unlit cigar between two fingers. He did not blink. He had survived twenty-five years in the most lethal criminal syndicate on the Eastern Seaboard; he knew when a room had become a gallows.

"Dominic," Marcus whispered, his voice smooth as engine grease. "You're listening to the hallucinations of a traumatized six-year-old child."

"I didn't believe it at first," Dominic said. He reached into his coat pocket and slid Sophie’s charcoal sketch across the polished laminate table. It slid six feet and stopped against Marcus's water glass. "Then I had Sal check the private communications logs from your secondary phone. The one registered to an LLC in Delaware that you think I didn't know about. On October fourteenth, at eight-fourteen in the morning, that phone pinged the cell tower two hundred yards from St. Joseph’s Preschool."

Marcus looked down at the drawing. He didn't pick it up.

"You sat at my table, Marcus. You held Nora when she was running a fever after the funeral. You cried during Isabelle’s eulogy." Dominic’s voice remained entirely level, stripped of all theatrics. "Why?"

***