“When I found her, or maybe she found me, I was just some guy who had asked too many questions about the Colonia. She was smart, Sarah, wicked smart, and I was in over my head. A stupid kid who got stuck in a warehouse for three days. She was Colonia. She had answers. But also, she was the wife of Peter Colonia—who threw us out and let my mother die.”

“She didn’t know.”

“She slept in our bedroom in StuyTown. Cooked on our stove.”

“They don’t tell us anything,” Sarah says.

“I didn’t care. You’re all in on it. I let her go back, knowing what they’d do to her. What do you think happens to women after they’re hollowed? They don’t get to see their children.”

She steps away from the glass. I can still taste her breath on my lips.

“Don’t tell me.”

“It’s too late for that, prima. And you know it.”

She’s leaning toward the other end of the hall. The exit. She’s too curious to run now. She’s opened up a can of possibilities and she’s ready to know what they are.

“The truth,” she demands.

I can tell her the truth without betraying much more.

“There are men who like a stripped cunt. They’ll pay good money for them.”

“So she was—”

“Shush.” I shut her down before I have to say too much. “What I do know… because I saw it happen… is someone was brought out in a bag soon after your mother was hollowed. It’s a woman, and she’s still there.”

“Where?” Her question is little more than a breath.

“There’s a place in Queens called the Hole. If Massimo doesn’t know it, Caesar does. Ten paces west of Angel’s Tower. Bring shovels.”

Her eyes go wide, and her lovely lower lip goes slack as shock replaces anger. She puts her back to the wall and blinks. Tears fall. I drown in those tiny droplets.

“You said she was alive.”

“She might be. Go find out.”

As if floating on yards and yards of black fabric, my wife runs out.

I press my cheek to the glass to catch a last glimpse of her pausing, rethinking, maybe disbelieving what she just heard, but the door at the end of the hall slaps closed and I’m alone again. She’s gone.

That’s the last I’ll ever see of her. She’ll never be back.

I’ve protected every good thing I’ve done in my life and lost her in the process. The trade is broken. It’s bad. Everything is bad, and empty, and it’s shattered me and thrown the pieces in the cold void with my brother’s body.

She’s gone, and I did it. I hurt her too much this time.