"I started watching you before I knew. I started watching you because you were a problem I needed to solve. I kept watching for three weeks while I solved it. I solved the wrong problem."
He looks at me.
"I have been the head of my family's security for ten years. I have never solved the wrong problem before."
I do not speak.
"You have been my brother for thirty-eight years. Of those three weeks, I have spent fourteen days running you as a hostile actor, seven days running you as a person of interest, and five days running you as a man my consigliera was protecting from me. I never ran you as my brother."
A breath. The first one.
"I am sorry."
He says the three words as if they were operational data. He says them as if they were the only three words to be said in this room that are not operational data.
He looks at me. I look at him.
He has been watching me for three weeks. The entire time I was opening her safe. The entire time, I was carrying the brass key. The entire time I was reading my own birthday on a folded piece of paper in a closet on West 12th.
His brother had been letting it happen.
I have been one piece of paper away from this room for thirty-eight years.
I have been one camera away for three weeks.
Stronzo,Nadia.
You knew that, too.
13
SEAN
Alessandro stands.
He does not say where he is going. He does not need to. He is leaving us alone in this room because he has decided that whatever the next thirty minutes are, the next thirty minutes are not for him.
He goes through the door behind me.
The door closes.
Nothing in the room has changed. Concrete walls. Two chairs. A table. Three men reduced to two.
The silence has not gone anywhere. It is now mine and his, and there is no Don in the room to absorb any of it.
He is sitting in his chair the way I am sitting in mine. Forward of center. Weight on the back of the thighs, not the seat. The posture of a man trained to move out of a chair faster than the chair was designed to release him.
I am sitting that way without thinking about it. He is sitting that way without thinking.
We have been sitting that way our whole lives.
He breaks the silence.
"You don't move like a stranger."
"You don't either."
"I have been pulling security footage from across the city for three days."
