Kostas wanted me alive.
The men in the tree line are clearly answering to someone else.
The first shot comes from the tree line on the east side of the drive. The second is Luca answering. The man in the trees does not get to fire a third.
Past the tree line, a federal sedan sits in a service-road cut. Two long lenses up. NYPD. Reyes's people. Photographing every face that comes out of the house tonight.
We move in pairs by the time we reach the inner perimeter. Alessandro and Matteo on the right side of the drive. Luca and I on the left.
Twenty yards in, Alessandro takes a round.
He goes down on one knee. Matteo is on him before he is all the way down. Drags him into the cover of a low stone wall. Matteo's voice over the comm. Clinical. The voice of a man who has dragged his older brother out of the worst.
He's hit. Shoulder. Through and through. He's fine. Hold the perimeter.
Alessandro's voice next. Annoyed.
I am holding the goddamn perimeter. Go.
I look at the wall for one second. The man behind it is the brother I have had for less than a day, and he is down, and I am going to be thinking about that for the rest of my life, and I do not have the time to think about it now.
Luca taps my shoulder.
We go.
The drive opensinto a courtyard fifty yards before the main house. Six men. Three behind the fountain. Two on the steps. One on the roof.
Luca clears the three at the fountain in under five seconds.
I take the two on the steps.
The one on the roof is Luca's again. He does not even look up while he does it. He fires at an angle I would have had to think about, and the man on the roof comes off the roof.
We are at the steps. A body across the marble. Luca steps over it.
"Real estate's slow on Tuesdays."
I do not laugh. He does not need me to.
He is the brother I did not know I had, and he is clearing a courtyard with me before dawn.
We ended up on the same side anyway.
We holdat the foot of the main staircase. Luca reloads. I reload. Neither of us looks at the other while we do it.
"Boathouse," he says.
"Crane."
"For Frank?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Then go. We'll get the next one for Maria."
I cannot answer. The man who just said that is my brother, and the woman he just named is my mother, and I have not earned the right to speak about her yet.
I go.
