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“Mario’s burned, but he’ll live. Giulio—” The line crackles. “They’re working on him now.”

I’m already dressed and heading for the door. “Which stock?”

“The cosmetics line. Millions, easy. But the men, sir⁠—”

“Best hospital, both families notified before dawn by a person, not a phone.” I have my keys. “I’m on my way.”

“Sir, there’s nothing here but ash⁠—”

“Then I’ll stand in the ash with my people. Giulio doesn’t burn alone because it’s three in the morning. I’m coming.”

“There’s more.” Renzo’s voice drops. “The night count wasn’t scheduled. Somebody moved it up on the board yesterday. I don’t know why the count was moved up. The order, did it come from you?”

The possibility of this being just an accident slams shut. “No, Renzo. Not from me.”

“I’ll keep digging⁠—”

I don’t hear the rest of his promises. I know who did this.

It’s not a fire. It’s a message with a body attached, or near enough. The message reads that Matteo can reach my people inside my own walls and choose the hour they burn.

I cut into his promises. “Be there soon. Hold tight.”

The last time I saw Giulio was at the terminal, ribbing Doyle about his coffee. Twenty-six and immortal the way the young are until they aren’t.

I put him on that count rotation. The protocol I built to catch Matteo’s chalk pills is the same protocol that had two men in a building at midnight. My caution did this as surely as Matteo’s match.

I look in on Sarah before I go. She’s asleep with Pip crushed under one arm, mouth open, breathing the deep, unbothered breath of a child who believes everything is going to be alright. She never used to sleep that way. Not when she was first sick or the years after.

But with Veda watching over her, she sleeps.

The forty-minute drive to Bergamo is marked by an expanding orange glow on the horizon. When I get there, the roof has collapsed, and the fire has consumed everything beneath it. Decades of stock and oil from trees my grandfather planted are reduced to a lingering scent that will cling to my clothes for a week. Might as well burn them as well.

Heat radiates to me from thirty meters away. Cinders drift on the updraft and fade over the dark vineyards. It is stunning—the way complete destruction can be—and I despise that some instinctive part of me recognizes the beauty while a boy is lying in a hospital bed.

Firemen handle the perimeter and work until they achieve containment. My team focuses on the areas firemen aren’t permitted to access—the inquiries, witnesses, and subduing the people who came to witness.

Nick is already there, soot on his collar, and his face gives me the number before I ask. “Giulio didn’t make it. Ten minutes ago.” He says it flat. “Wife and two kids in Monza.”

I don’t answer. There isn’t an answer. But I cross myself. Ma’s habit.

“Mario’s stable, second-degree over one arm, lucky. Two others treated for smoke.”

The name refuses to become a fact no matter how many times I set it down. I gave Giulio the job because his father drove for mine for thirty years. Just a favor between old men passed down to a boy. Now the father outlives the son.

This week, I will be in that man’s kitchen, giving him both a truth and a sum of money, but neither will be appreciated—they will be insults. Still, I will offer them because there’s nothing else to give a father whose son died without reason. I’ll make the same offer to his wife, and she will slap me, and I will allow it. And then I’ll leave the money anyway.

I stand watching the building fade away, and a sharp, useful cold rises within me—one that outlasts grief. Right now I need the cold. Grief chooses no targets, but a war requires them.

“Sit-down,” I tell Nick. “Full houses, neutral ground, this week. And prepare the dossier. All of it. We’re doing this.”

“You’re sure? Once it’s out, there’s no version where you come through clean.”

“I stopped being clean a long time ago, Nick.” I look at the shell of the warehouse, the crew rolling up hose. “Giulio was clean. I’m done spending clean men to keep a dirty peace.”

The firefighters lose the building around five. There was never any saving it, only the ritual of trying. A for effort.

A carabiniere takes my statement. I give him the version where I know nothing, which he writes down knowing it’s that version. The one where I’m innocent, and this is just an accident.