Rory Brennan isn’t my father. That has never been more obvious than it is on this street. He’s broad where my father was spare. Loud where my father was quiet. A good man in most ways that matter and a dangerous one in several that don’t.
He looks at the covered stretcher. Then at me. “Come here, girl.”
I don’t. If I go to him, he’ll put an arm around me. If he puts an arm around me, I’ll have to decide whether to become the kind of woman who can be held right now.
“What happened?” he asks when I don’t move.
A police officer answers. “Mr. Brennan appears to have been involved in an altercation after a private meeting. We’re gathering statements.”
“Appears,” I repeat.
Everyone looks at me.
“It’s early, Miss Brennan,” the officer says.
“It’s late enough for you to have a version,” I counter.
His eyes flick briefly past me to the man standing at the edge of the street.
Alessandro Vitale has arrived.
Men reposition. A shoulder turns. A conversation stops half a sentence early. The officer straightens, then pretends he hasn’t. Luca steps aside, not away but into a better angle.
Authority doesn’t announce itself. It organizes.
Alessandro walks beneath a black umbrella held by someone else. He isn’t hurried; rain doesn’t touch him. Of course it doesn’t. Weather probably files requests with men like him. His suit is dark. His face is still.
Stillness looks different on him than it does on me. Mine is survival. His is ownership.
He stops in front of me. “Miss Brennan.”
Precise. Appropriate. Distant enough to respect the dead and close enough to measure the living.
“Don Vitale,” I reply.
His gaze moves over my face, looking for something. Grief, perhaps. Shock. Weakness. Whatever he finds, he doesn’t comment on it. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Are you?”
The street quiets in a way it hadn’t quieted even for death. Rory makes a low sound behind me. Alessandro doesn’t look at him.
“Yes,” he says.
A lesser man would’ve performed grief. A crueler one would’ve performed control. Alessandro does neither. He offers the exact amount required by the shape of the moment and no more.
I hate that I respect the efficiency.
“What happened?” I ask.
The officer starts to answer, but Alessandro lifts one hand. “There was an altercation after the meeting,” he says.
“With whom?”
“The details are not confirmed.”
“Then confirm them.”
His eyes settle on mine. For the first time, I understand what it means to be looked at by him without anyone else in the room mattering.
