Blood and Silence

The first thing Nico Marchetti did every morning was count the exits. Three in the restaurant, one through the freezer that led to the alley behind Petrosino's Bakery. He'd memorized them the way other twenty-six-year-olds memorized batting averages—obsessively, because his life depended on it. He was doing that count when his uncle Sal walked into the Sparrow Room wearing a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Nicolo. Sit with me." Nico sat. In this family, you sat when Sal asked. "We have a problem," Sal said, sliding a folder across the bar. "Two hundred and forty thousand dollars has walked out of the count house on Bath Avenue. Slow, careful—someone who understands our business." Inside were photographs from the count house's security feed: Bobby Trapani, who ran the place. Angela Reyes, Sal's bookkeeper. And on page four, a photo that dropped Nico's stomach to his shoes—himself, Tuesday night, standing in the doorway. "I was picking up the Ferrara envelope. You sent me." "I know," Sal said gently. "But someone wanted you in that folder. You have three days, before the Commission sits and Rossi finds an excuse to say the Marchetti house can't govern itself." Nico understood. It meant blood. Possibly his own. He started with Bobby, who was scared in a way that told Nico he was innocent. That left Angela—the one person besides Sal who held the count house's master code, and the one person Nico least wanted it to be. He found her that night in the office above the restaurant. She didn't deny it when he asked. "It's not what you think," she said. "I've been feeding it to someone who's spent two years trying to take this family apart from the inside. I said no, until he told me what he had on you. I put your face in that folder to keep you out of the real one." "Who?" Footsteps on the stairs, unhurried, confident. A voice Nico had known his whole life. "Angela. Tell the boy whose name is really supposed to be in that folder." Nico turned, already knowing—with the sick certainty of a man watching the floor open beneath him—exactly whose face he'd see. Danny Costa stepped into the light. Sal's oldest friend. The man who'd taught Nico to drive, who'd stood godfather at his confirmation, who had cried at his father's funeral. "You look like you've seen a ghost, kid," Danny said, settling into a chair like he had all the time in the world. "Sit down. Let's talk like people who've known each other a long time." "You've been stealing from the family," Nico said. "I've been *correcting* it," Danny said, and smiled the same warm smile he always had—which was, Nico understood now, exactly why nobody had ever suspected him at all.