“I’d like to have you too.”

“You saw what I did today. What I did twice.”

“Please, Gilda. For your mother.”

“I’m not that woman’s daughter. I’m not . . . I don’t know how to go back.”

I wasn’t crying, not really, until he took me in his arms. It was what I’d wanted for a very long time, but it didn’t take the pain away. It wasn’t what I needed anymore.

I broke the embrace and shook my head, and he climbed aboard the yacht. A peal of laughter from Juliette or Edith, I could not be sure, echoed giddily down the gangway, sending a wave of nausea rolling down my chest, a hot wire that shot up from my stomach and into my throat. I turned away, not wanting them to see me be sick.

“Gilda,” called Virgil, but I did not turn around. I held my stomach, willing my body to cooperate for just a minute more. “Gilda.”

Finally, the engines started, and the yacht pulled away. My nausea subsided. I turned around and saw the lights of the little boat pulling up the river. In the darkness, I couldn’t see the man named Virgil Carr. I fell to my knees, slumped on the dock, and whispered something like goodbye.

I shook the gas can on my shoulder. A few ounces of fuel still rattled around in there. I reached into my bag. One bullet left.

The Christopher Street IRT was deserted. The long dark corridor stank of spilled liquor. A trickle of moonshine dripped down the platform, oozing from the bullet holes in the stills like leaking blood.

Barbarossa’s car waited on the downtown tracks. Its stolen blue door, of which she had been so proud, had been hacked apart. The windows had been shot away.

“I heard legends of this place,” said Cherub Stevens as we crossed the flimsy wooden bridge that led to the car. “Rotgut’s great storeroom. Her museum. Her private car. I always imagined grandeur. This is . . . well, it’s a bit like a dragon, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“They can have all the treasure they want, but they have to live in a cave.”

The inside of the car was a wreck. Her treasured globe lay cracked open like an eggshell. Feathers from a slashed mattress blanketed every surface. Defaced statues, torn paintings, every piece of furniture smashed to pieces. Somewhere in the wreckage of broken glass lay my father’s last taste of Boulton’s Rye.

“What are you looking for?” said Cherub. I didn’t answer. I kicked aside the wreckage. I found nothing worth saving.

“How do you feel about a walk in the dark?” I said.

“I’d rather get back on the surface, if it’s all the same to you. Dinner, maybe.”

“Go ahead,” I said. I left the car and hopped from the bridge onto the tracks.

“Where are you going?”

“North.”