I glare at Doc. The table around him is a mess. Loose paper, scraps of wire, tablets, discarded scalpels, and textbooks. The polished oak floorboards are caked with dirt, and the side tables are covered in an inch of dust. This house is more than two hundred years old and in less than five, my brothers have turned it into a truck stop restroom. My Nonno’s houses were always immaculate, not a fingerprint on a mirror or a speck of dust on the mantelpiece. If he saw this place… “This place is a fucking mess.”

Doc shoves another dumpling in his mouth. “Why are you bitching at us about it? Hire a cleaner.”

“I did. She saw your workroom and ran away.”

Doc smirks. “Oh, yeah. So, hire someone else.”

“While we’re keeping the daughter of one of New York’s most prestigious families in our basement?”

“Well, if you’re too paranoid, we can’t have a clean house, can we?”

“We have a live-in staff of five. One of them—”

Doc points his chopsticks at me. “You wanna tell the boys to stop making us money and surveilling the people trying to kill us so they can sponge the carpet, be my fuckin’ guest. Personally, I’m gonna live with the mess.”

I pick up my chopsticks and dig into my karaage chicken. Domenico Valente is as disrespectful now as he was at sixteen. Worse. He used to be at least a little afraid of what would happen if he ran his mouth to the wrong person. Bullets would bounce off his arrogance now. Before I can tell him so, Bobby strides into the room. “I’ve sent the file. Parker’s already seen it.”

I lower my chopsticks. “He’s watched the footage?”

“A couple of times.”

I feel a sweet, almost giddy sense of release, and smiles spread across my brother’s faces, even Adriano’s. I stand and walk to the bar to collect the bottle of grappa I brought from my wing. It was distilled by my Bisnonno and I’ve been saving it since I turned eighteen. It’s surreal to crack the seal and smell the sharp-sweet liquor. I pour triple measures and bring the tumblers over.

“Congratulations,” I say, raising my glass. “May all our plans succeed, and our lost ones be avenged.”

We drink and for a moment no one speaks. We’re all lost in our own world. No matter how much time passes, the memories of what led us here never fade. When you’re young, things have a freshness you can’t reclaim. Your first taste of wine. The first time you know a girl will let you kiss her. The first time a man raises a gun to you and your blood turns to ice.

These days you could strap me to the side of a train, and I wouldn’t feel that bright, all-consuming fear. A good thing. But there’s something about the old days, the four of us running wild through the boroughs, hatching our first schemes, convinced we were kings. Now my brothers and I are kings, but we’ve fought for every inch of our sovereignty with blood. We’re tired, and we don’t laugh like we used to.