“Against the wall,” says Tommy Fianzo Jr., and it is not just inadequate, but unnecessary, because he is pointing a gun at Sofia. “Let’s all take a walk.” And Sofia understands that whatever tenuous moment of understanding she might have been building toward with Tommy Fianzo Jr. has been lost, and with it, any hope she and Saul have of getting out of this unscathed. Of getting out of it at all.

—

The cab pulls up short a few blocks away from the docks. Next to Antonia in the backseat, Paolo takes her hand. “Please stay here,” he begs her.

“I love you,” she responds.

(Paolo and Antonia, seventeen years old, ran out of things to say halfway through their first date. Words seemed entirely insufficient.)

Antonia opens the car door and slips out. She begins to run, alone.

It is noon, but it looks like evening. The air smells like metal and engine oil, like every evening of Antonia’s childhood, the kitchen window in Sofia’s apartment open to the slow breeze coming off the East River. The way the air can smell like the ocean and the city all at once.

Antonia is alight with energy. The deepest parts of her have been pulled up to the surface of her skin.

And of course, Antonia is not alone. She has Sofia with her. She has Carlo. And because she stopped upstairs in Sofia’s apartment before getting in a cab, she has a gleaming, heavy, fully loaded pearl-handled pistol.

—

Paolo is running to catch up with Antonia. She is stealthy, quick, better at this than Paolo would have guessed, moving from dumpster to shipping container, sheltering herself.

In front of the Fianzo building there stands a guard. Antonia cannot see him from her vantage point behind a tall metal pylon. Paolo can see that when Antonia moves again, she will cross right into the guard’s line of sight. He runs.

As a child, Paolo was scrappy. Three older brothers and the bloody path home from school had beaten into him the importance of self-defense, and defense of those you loved. Paolo was well-known in his neighborhood, and not just for his handwriting.

Paolo’s fist connects with the Fianzo guard’s face before the guard even has time to register that anyone is approaching. Paolo draws back his right fist again but then jabs viciously with his left, hitting just under the guard’s rib cage. The soft flesh there collapses; the guard lets out a whoosh of breath. Paolo elbows him in the face. Something cracks. I love you, Paolo thinks, picturing Saul and Antonia. The Fianzo guard slips into a blissful unconsciousness. Paolo leaves the guard bruised and bloodied, draped over the concrete steps. He takes off after Antonia. I love you, he prays.

—