Most of my injuries are on the surface apart from the burns on the bottoms of my feet, which hurt like a motherfucker. A couple of ribs are bruised. The prod left burn marks, and although I’ll walk away with a few scars, I will walk away.

I refused the heavier painkillers because they’ll trap me in sleep. But what the doctor shot me with is making me drift in and out anyway. Amadeo and Bruno are talking quietly. I pick up bits and pieces of conversation as I move in and out of consciousness so reality and dream intermingle. But when the scene in the kitchen comes into focus, I know I’m moving into unconscious almost right away. I know it every single time. The nightmare has played this opening scene for fifteen years. Yet it never fails to bring me to my knees. Here, in this kitchen, I’m not yet a man. I’m a helpless, stupid boy. A boy whose words sentence his family to their fate.

Tonight, though, it’s a little different. Tonight, Geno Russo is a blur. Lucien is center stage, looking like he did earlier in the day. And the soldier who cuts my face is the man with the cattle prod.

“You never did know when to keep your mouth shut,” Lucien says.

And then it plays out exactly as it always does. My mother screaming. The bat coming down on my father’s knees. The blade slicing Amadeo’s face. My face.

God. Fuck. I can feel it like it’s real, and I know I’m fucking dreaming it. I know. But by the time I can drag myself out, by the time I open my eyes and bolt upright, I’m covered in sweat.

I take a minute to catch my breath. To look around and know that I’m alone in the bedroom. The curtains are drawn, and it’s dark.

We’re in one of Dominic Benedetti’s penthouses in the city. Not a safehouse per se, but safe all the same because no one would be stupid enough to attack us while we’re under his roof. Lucien Russo doesn’t have that kind of manpower. He’s borrowing it. That much Bruno learned. As much as Lucien Russo wants to be the big man on campus, he’s nothing. He has no soldiers of his own. He hires mercenaries and the problem with mercenaries is their loyalties are fluid at best. They’re always willing to change sides if the terms are better. The guards he’d sent to protect Vittoria during their father’s funeral were easy enough to buy off. None of the men who work for him or those he borrows would lay down their own lives for him.