“She’d set up call forwarding. She’s a bit of a workaholic. After that call, Willa put an end to anyone answering a forwarded call until we were done… um… choofing off I think they were calling it.”

I spit a laugh at how silly it sounds, and the relief that Connor somehow got my note.

“Choofing off is leaving,” I say, remembering Dario telling me what to say. He was protecting his women. When he traded all of them for me, he still had a sliver of hope I’d delivered the note.

“Yes. Everyone fled to safety.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

“I did, but I couldn’t stay away. I snuck back here. They’ll be mad about it when they get back. But I had to see you and Massimo.” She looks at her lap. I know this posture, having kept it so many times when I was hesitant or ashamed. “And now I have.”

“Massi’s here? Or did they—”

I stop myself. I may be used to talking about people I love being murdered, but my mother may not be so hardened.

“He’s alive but…” She makes a barely perceptible nod. “We won’t be seeing him for a while.”

So something happened. Something violent.

“Mom? Is he all right?”

“He will be.” She puts her hand over mine. “I need to leave it at that. Please.”

Her head is bowed as if in prayer. I barely know this person who raised me, who read to me and sang me songs. I don’t know what they took away when they removed her womanhood.

“I’ll take your word for it about Massimo, but you have to tell me about Dario. Right now.”

She snaps out of it, straightening her spine, looking at me directly with sharpness and strength.

“I don’t know,” she says. “None of us do. Willa got word Dario was at the St. Maarten’s airport. He’d cross paths with the Colonia men there. The airport’s so small, there’s no way they didn’t see him, and he should have been here already. I thought he was in the cars you came in, but it was DiLustro. He went off to make sure I was alone and then…” A smile spreads across her face and she holds my hands again. “Then you came down that driveway.”

She’s absolutely beaming. I feel sick to my stomach.

“I can’t go back to them again,” I say, knowing I will if I have to.

“I’m sure he’s fine.”

Fine. The word is so flat and empty—and my mother is so dismissive—it could mean anything. Almost anything. It means he could be alive, if nothing else.