I pull back the sheet, only to his chest. I don’t know why.
His face is pale beneath the bruising. Rain has darkened his hair at the temples. There is blood at his collar, dried wrong because rain touched some of it and not the rest.
His eyes are closed. Someone closed them. I hate them for that.
“Papa,” I say.
His mouth is slightly parted, as though he had been interrupted. That makes sense. Death would interrupt him. It wouldn’t win an argument.
I place the sheet back exactly as it was. My hands are steady. That seems rude, too. A woman should tremble when her father has been murdered. She should cry, collapse, become soft enough for other people to manage.
Instead, I turn and look at the street. The official version is already moving around me in pieces.
“Terrible accident.”
“Deal gone bad.”
“Timing was unfortunate.”
“No indication of intent.”
That last one almost makes me laugh. Men like my father don’t die accidentally in alleys after private meetings with men who don’t write things down. They’re killed, removed, traded, corrected. Intent is the currency. The body is just the receipt.
I listen. A uniformed officer speaks to one of Alessandro’s men near the club entrance.
“Argument inside?”
“No argument.”
“But raised voices?”
“Business discussion.”
“With Brennan?”
“With several parties.”
“Dante Vitale?”
A pause.
“No.”
No?Interesting. Because Dantehadbeen here. I saw him.
He arrived early. That’s what sits wrong.
The schedule was precise. My father at nine. Alessandro at nine. Dante later, if at all, because apparently heirs are like storms and difficult dogs, managed by timing and distance.
But Dante came early. I saw him from the car. Dark coat. No umbrella. Walking too fast down the side entrance with a man I didn’t recognize behind him.
He didn’t look like someone arriving for a meeting. He looked like someone failing to leave one.
“Evie.”
Rory’s voice cuts through the rain. My uncle reaches me with two Brennan men at his back and fury trying very hard to become strategy on his face.
That frightens me more than tears would.
