She thought the mark would be of interest to me. It was to Salvatore, apparently. The brand was a larger version of the Benedetti family crest, a generations-old symbol of power in our world, at least in southern Italy and the northeastern United States. It was an exact copy of the one I held in my hand. Mateo Castellano had been branded before his death, and someone wanted to get two messages out: one, that he was a snitch, and snitches were dealt with mercilessly. Two, that it was a Benedetti who’d done the dealing.

But this wasn’t how Roman operated. It wasn’t his MO. I wouldn’t put it past Franco, but he had a different sort of cruelty. He was just as brutal but not medieval in his torture. I didn’t suspect Salvatore for a second.

That’s why I’d given Gia the pills.

Mateo was my age, or close to it. He had a kid sister. I’d met her once, a long time ago. I think I’d been seventeen or eighteen. It was at a party, which my father had attended, where a secret meeting had been held. He’d brought me along. When they’d gone to talk, I’d wandered around the property, bored, annoyed at not being invited into the meeting. A little ways from the house, I’d come across a little girl backed against a tree by two boys about twelve, I’d say. They were apparently trying to take something from her, and she’d been putting up a hell of a fight, but she couldn’t have been more than seven. I’d told the boys to piss off and leave the kid alone. She’d given me a look. It wasn’t a “thanks for saving me” or anything like that. It’d been a glare. She’d been just as pissed at me as she’d been at those boys. I remembered I’d laughed when Mateo had found us there and told her to get back to the house and help their mother with something. She’d spoken to him in Italian and thrown a sideways glance my way before running back house, the flash of her angry green eyes from beneath those thick dark bangs now unsettlingly familiar.

I didn’t know Mateo’s sister’s name. I’d never asked.

And I had a suspicion I wanted gone.

I needed to check the mark on Gia’s hip.

She’d be the right age. That party had been seventeen, almost eighteen years ago. If I was right about the little girl being seven, that’d make her twenty-four now.