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Lando had landed on the large island, and the loud noise had been the hanging copper pots collapsing over his body as he collided with them. His face was a mask of indignant fury, a trickle of blood spilling from his mouth, and a gunshot wound to the middle lower abdomen.

In front of him, leaning a hip against the concrete island, stood Niccolo, casually biting into a red apple with a gun held loose at his side.

I blinked. Once, twice, three times, but the tableau didn’t shift.

Beside me, Carla stepped forward, surveying the mess with a click of her tongue.

“Darling, you’ve made a mess,” she scolded, and at first, I thought she must have been talking to Lando, as bizarre as that would have been.

Instead, she walked forward to Niccolo, who lifted an arm around her shoulders and curled her into his front. He still had an apple in his mouth, but he kissed her soundly, the juice spilling between their joined lips.

“Ma che cazzo sta succedendo?” I asked, reverting to Italian without realizing it in my state of shock.

I wondered madly if I was sleeping on my feet and dreaming this up.

Lando gurgled on the island, trying to right himself.

Carla pulled the gun from Niccolo’s hand and leveled it at her husband without even properly sighting him before pulling the trigger twice. The shots landed in Lando’s belly along with the first, and he slumped back against the discarded pots with a wheezing exhale.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked, pressing myself back into the wall beside the door as if it could swallow me whole and transport me somewhere safer.

It was my question, but I was already figuring out the answer before Carla opened her mouth.

“I warned you what would happen if you stepped out of line,” she reprimanded her dying husband from the circle of Niccolo’s arms. “And you still tried to warn Fia, didn’t you, you old dog? How many times did I have to tell you not to interfere with my business.”

She turned to me then with a little smile. “Are you hungry, dear? It’s almost breakfast time, and I’m absolutely famished. Why don’t you whip us up a little omelet. Niccolo, darling, are you hungry?”

“Ravenous,” he proclaimed, his eyes pinned on her mouth as if nothing else existed, claiming it with a thorough kiss. He rutted against her, and it was clear shooting Lando had heavily aroused him.

Bile rose in my throat.

“Are the boys dead yet?” she asked him, sliding her hands down his chest.

The boys.

Dio mio, she meant the twins.

I couldn’t comprehend the horrible twist of events. Maybe I could have believed it of Lando, but Carla? The woman who had taken me under her wing when I first arrived in this country, who had chatted warmly with me over countless lunches and shopping excursions, who had always bowed to Lando’s will in public, had just killed her husband while embracing another man.

A Sicilian, too, who she claimed to think were scum.

My head swam, and I had to brace myself against the wall.

Her contradictory nature suddenly made too much sense.

The kind, docile mother-in-law and wife was merely a well-honed mask, her ability to deceive obviously passed along to her twin sons, who had played so long at being one person.

Carla, too, was two people.

The lion playing a role as a lamb.

“The men are at the house now,” Niccolo assured her.

Carla beamed at him and patted his cheek. “Such a good boy. Fiammetta, didn’t I ask you to make us all breakfast?”

She gestured to me with the gun so casually, it almost wasn’t a threat.

Except everything about this charade had clearly been performed to scare me out of my wits.