“Just to open the shutters,” my brother said. “To get some cross breeze. You’d think, having lived in Rome, you’d know something about managing the heat.”

His explanation was nonsense. He had her purse on the desk, her gun in his hand.

She gave me a beseeching glance.

“You trust this woman too much,” my brother said to me. “For all you know, she has been in touch with the murderers outside.”

“You’re the one who led them here,” said Zanche.

“They were lying in wait. I suspected as much. But I came anyway, to help my sister.”

Her eyes slanted from one of us to the other. At the picture we made. Myself in this thin skirt, with a damp film all over me, my hair mussed. My brother covered in the same must, his shirt out, his belt hanging loose. I guessed what she was thinking. I thought she might spit out the accusation, or part of it, anyway: Murderers, the pair of you. Her lip trembled and there were tears in her eyes, but this welling of emotion wasn’t on behalf of Isabella, or Frank, or even Paolo Orsini. It was because she was afraid. For herself, and her lost Gasparo.

“Aw,” mocked my brother. “Such crocodile tears.”

“Leave her be,” I said. “She suffers.”

“That’s because her man, her lover, has sold her down the river.”

“No,” she said.

“He was reporting to the head deputy all along, to intelligence ministry. Our every move. Isn’t that right?”

Zanche said nothing.

“It’s on account of the estate, dear sister. Because on your death, as it now sits, with the papers unexecuted, the money will fall to Dazio’s mother. And the stepfather takes control. Meanwhile Isabella’s heirs . . . ”

“So the head deputy sends these men to kill me. But why?”

“For his own share. With a nickel to the senators. And a penny for the pope.”

“No,” said Zanche. “Gasparo knew nothing of this.”

“You lie.”

“No.”

“Then you were deceived. Gasparo betrayed you. He obeyed the head deputy’s instructions and sent you here, so my sister would be murdered in this country. Because here there’ll be no investigation. And as Gasparo’s reward, they chopped off his hands and dumped them in the ocean for the fish to chew away the prints.”

She called Johnny a name in Italian. It was a foul name, for a man who makes his living by lying facedown and letting a rich man fuck him up the ass.

My brother didn’t say anything.

He smiled that sweet smile of his. He held the revolver in his palm. Zanche’s lip trembled, but she still had that haughty look. Johnny stepped forward and struck her head with the butt end of the gun.

I cried out.

“Hush,” said Johnny.