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“Twice in the stomach, once in the shoulder, once through the hand when he tried to keep the blade out of his gut. Julien broke his jaw with the barstool on the way down, for good measure." I nod at the duck as a servant sets it in front of me. "He's in surgery. Dad is at the hospital with him."

"Then I should be there, too."

"After dinner. There's nothing you can do there except terrorise the nurses."

She gives me a long look, then picks up her fork.

We eat. That's the part that might be hard to believe—that we just sit and eat, under such circumstances, discussing stabbings and death as though making observations about the weather. The duck is perfect, if I say so myself. The potatoes are crisp and flavorful with the addition of goose fat—my mother praises the texture while moving food around to keep her hands busy—and forty feet away a man watches us do it, because I told my men to point him at the table.

Halfway through my second helping, I set my glass down.

"Constantine. Bring him over. He's too far away to join the conversation."

Constantine wipes his mouth, pushes his chair back, and crosses the lawn like a man who's been asked to move furniture—it’s the inconvenient expression on his face that gets on my last nerve. The men, directed by my brother, bring the prisoner over between them, and he leaves a crooked track through the grass where his feet won't cooperate.

They put him down on the tile at the end of the table, close enough that I can smell him over the earthy rosemary and sweet orange. Copper. Sweat. And underneath it, sharp and human, piss. He knows we can smell it, but that doesn’t bother me. I like the odor of human fear; it gets me going. Perhaps even more so than the culinary masterpiece I just concocted.

Up close, I note the split brow, a nose that's been introduced to something hard, a lip swollen fat as a thumb. Young. Expensive haircut under all the blood, a watch worth more than the men holding him earn in a year. Of course I know who he is. If he were someone else, he’d already be in the ground, under a few layers of cement. I wouldn’t even bother to fix his face beforehand, or make sure his body was found. Nobody touches my family and lives to have Schubert’s Ave Maria played at his funeral Mass or service. Unless you’re this guy… lucky bastard.

"You're dead," he says. The words come out cracked, so he says them again, louder, as though volume will fix it. "You're all fucking dead! Do you know who I am? Do you know what my father is going to do to this place? To all of you?" His teeth are pink when he shouts. "You're already dead! You just don't know it yet."

Lucky, arrogant weasel.

His eyes keep leaving us. They go to the spade leaning against the fountain. To the folded sheet of plastic next to it, weighed down with a stone so the evening breeze doesn't take it. Every time they land there, his threats get louder.

A servant sets the sauce boat down behind him and he flinches so hard, the gravel rattles under his knees.

I eat while he performs. The duck really is one of the most scrumptious things I’ve ever eaten.

"Would you like some?" I ask, when he pauses for air. "Duck. It’s…” I kiss my fingers most passionately, “chef’s kiss. That’s me, the chef. You look pale."

"Laszlo," my mother says.

"What? Look at him. When did anyone last feed him?"

He spits at the table and grins like a fucking lunatic, a pathetic attempt to mask the fear. It lands well short of the cloth. I decide not to take it personally.

"My family will take this house apart," he rasps. His voice is shit, but he swallows and keeps going. "They'll put every one of you in the ground. Your men. Your mother. Your⁠—"

I set my knife and fork down on the cloth, side by side, perfectly parallel.

The servants stop where they're standing. Constantine turns his head.

"Careful with your face," I tell him.

He blinks at me.

"Whatever expression you're wearing when you die is the one I'll have to fix. I do the makeup here." I pick up my wine, satisfied with how well I make unpleasant conversation on the spot. Doesn’t matter if I mean it or not. "I'm good, but I'm not a fucking magician."

The colour drains out from under the blood. His mouth keeps moving and nothing comes out of it for a second. Then the rage comes back to cover it, higher-pitched this time, filthier, his knees drumming the gravel.

"Not at the table, Laszlo," my mother says. "The language."

"You heard her. Constantine."

Constantine folds the napkin off his own lap—he's been holding it this whole time like he knew—and jams it between the Valmont boy's teeth. The threats keep coming. Muffled now. You have to admire the commitment.

That's when the shouting starts on the other side of the house.