He’d heard correctly. The name triggered a movie that played in fast-forward in Drilon’s head. Twenty or so years ago, at least, Drilon had been drinking, drinking a lot. He goes home where he lives with his brother, Burim, and his brother’s wife, Pia, and there’s Pia looking as hot as you like almost without a stitch on, and Burim’s out of the apartment running some errands like he was always doing trying to rise up in the Rudaj organization, one of the most notorious early Albanian mafias. But the bitch rebuffs his advances even though she was asking for it and digs her nails into his chest, like deep, and Drilon sees red. Goes berserk. What happens next, he certainly didn’t plan. He grabs his gun in a rage and shoots her in the forehead. Blam. Story’s over. But her kid’s there—little Pia. He considers shooting her too except he can suddenly hear people next door, so instead he hits her in the head with his gun, trashes the apartment, and takes the $500 stash that the brothers had hidden in the stove. He goes back to the bar where he was drinking, drinks more, stays until it closes, sleeps an hour on a park bench, and goes home to raise the alarm that his sister-in-law was murdered by intruders.

The fallout turned out to be a breeze. Burim accepted the intruder story as he was happy enough to be done with his wife and had been thinking seriously of dumping her, and the Rudaj organization and crew took care of everything. There was no investigation, no nothing. As far as anyone was concerned, Pia had just disappeared, leaving her daughter behind.

Did Buda mean either of those Pias?

“So?” Buda said. He’d noticed Drilon’s pause and blank expression. “Do you know a Pia Grazdani?”

Drilon felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. His face flushed, he could feel it. Three questions immediately crossed his mind: One, was he talking about Afrodita, his little niece, or Pia his sister-in-law? Drilon hadn’t given either of them a thought in more than twenty years, but one was dead and the other, who knows? Two, had Buda asked Burim the same question? And three, what the fuck was the correct answer?

“Er, I don’t think so,” Drilon said. “Why do you ask?”

Drilon had spoken to Buda, but it was Berti Ristani who spoke up.

“He’s asking because he wants to know. I’m asking you too, Drilon. I haven’t called your brother, because he’s busy at the moment. I assume you’d know if either you or your brother is related to this girl. The surname is pretty similar.”