“I think about it.” She doesn’t often. But she can’t get the image of small Antonia, life permanently scarred by the machinations of men with power and secrets to spare, out of her head. And lately, surrounded by friends who don’t call on the weekend or ask how she’s doing but who will stand next to her, an army of pleated skirts against all that’s unknown, Sofia is sometimes suddenly breathless, caught in a memory of grade-school friendlessness, the throat-ache of walking the halls under pinched, judgmental eyes. And Sofia realizes she harbors no curiosity about what it is her father does to run Brooklyn, but rather, is filled with anger. Anger at all of it.

“What do you think, then?”

“I think it’s wrong.” As Sofia says this she thinks she believes it. As she says it she is buoyed by a pure, sovereign opinion. She realizes this is Joey’s worst fear: that she will see what he does, and that she will hate it. “I think it’s wrong, and I think they really hurt people.”

“I think it is more complicated than that,” says Antonia. Antonia, who never has the privilege of single-mindedness. Who knows viscerally how the Family has destroyed her life, but also how they have maintained it. She feels surprised to think this. A hole punctured in the side of her imaginary future life, the air all draining out. You’ll never abandon your family, she realizes. She’s no better than Lina, who cannot escape Family ties either.

“How?” asks Sofia. She feels that she is right. She feels it catch flame inside of her. “How can you”—it is coming out, there’s no stopping it—“you, of all people, think it’s complicated?”

“Excuse me?” Antonia stands, and suddenly there they are: on the brink of something unspoken. They are giddy and close to tears, still fragile together. They do not want to break apart again, but it would be easy.

The fire consumes Sofia’s belly and chest and it comes for her throat. “After what they did to your papa. How can you. How can you think it’s complicated.”

“They pay my rent, Sof. And yours, in case you forgot.” Antonia glares. “Isn’t it a little hypocritical to criticize them?”

Sofia is suddenly both sorry and even more angry. Tears form behind her eyes. She feels herself grow hot and knows her face is bright red. Her voice is stuck in the back of her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“It’s okay,” says Antonia, and it is: the relief of having something to fight about somehow better than having nothing to say to one another at all.

Sofia looks at Antonia and opens her mouth to ask a thousand questions. “Aren’t you angry?” is what she says. “At them? At us?”