But all the while we were there, I felt like an outsider. Effie loved and accepted me. Salvatore too. But I didn’t belong in their world. I felt like I cast a dark shadow on their doorsteps, and the fact disgusted me. I didn’t want to be that.

When I returned home, I went to the house in the Adirondacks. To Franco’s big, spacious mansion. For the next eight months, I took care of family business, keeping as busy as I could, but walked through the house like a ghost. I kept everything Gia had worn until her scent wore off the clothes, and even then, I packed up the duffel bag and set it in the closet beside my things.

I thought in time I would forget her. Or at least stop missing her. But I didn’t. It didn’t seem to matter how much time passed.

I kept track of her. She and her mother sold the house she’d grown up in near Philadelphia. Her mother moved back to Italy, where her sister still lived, and Gia rented an apartment in Manhattan. I went into the city often, and each time I did, I got as close as the front door of the building before turning around.

She didn’t need me in her life.

I decided I hated the house in the Adirondacks. It only held dark memories of times past, of hatred and jealousy and an old world I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of anymore. All those years, I’d wanted nothing more than to be boss. All that time, I hadn’t realized what it meant to be that. That my father would be dead. That anyone who mattered would be gone. I felt more alone than I ever had in my life, and in a way, as long as I stayed here, I knew I would be stuck in this cold, empty past.

It was on the morning I decided to put the house on the market that I saw the newspaper article. Angus Scava had been indicted on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering, and tax fraud, and was a person of interest in several murders, including that of Mateo Castellano. The key witness? Victor Scava.

I guess he wished he’d cut out his nephew’s tongue now.

I closed the paper and stood. Going to the window, I opened it and inhaled a deep breath of fresh, cool autumn air. Summer was at an end.