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Frank had parked miles away on the adjoining property, an orange grove, before making the jog to the outskirts of the Trattoria. He crouched now in the shadows that ringed the parking lot, catching his breath and drinking from a canteen.

He was willing his heartrate down, but it kept up its tattoo against his ribs. The kill was in his nostrils. He could smell too much of it for it not to be close.

He watched through binoculars for ten minutes, counting the mobsters through the windows and comparing them to the layout in his head. He had no clear shot at Vincenzo and anyway, he didn't want to pick off a few of them when he could have the whole batch.

The guards were mostly on the inside, or at least in the garden. Scagliones countering the Beluccis and vice versa. They weren't expecting any offense from the outside; a token handful of guards walked the perimeter.

Frank shouldered his silenced G36. He looked through the scope at the fleet of Lincolns and Mercedes that had brought the Mob there. They parked a fair distance from each other—no one wanted to get hit by someone else's car bomb.

Finally, Frank zeroed in on the car that was furthest from the restaurant, stranded some hundreds of yards out in the dark. He aimed at one of its tires and fired with a soft phiff.

The bullet hit. Frank thought he heard a rush of escaping air, but it was probably his imagination at this distance. The Mercedes sagged on its off-balance suspension and flashed its headlights, the car alarm screeching into the night.

Like he'd fired his own starting pistol, Frank was up and off at a run. He circled the Trattoria on the far side while the blaring alarm drew a few guards to the windows and sparked a fierce debate about who should jog out to take care of the alarm.

As it continued to shriek, Frank dropped to his stomach and crawled between the pools of light falling from the lampposts. He bellied forward on knees and elbows: the sight of him a glimmer, the sound of him a whisper. The gravel that made up the parking lot stabbed into his gloves, his sleeves, his trousers. It felt like being suspended over a pit of spikes, imagining the points so vividly that you could just about feel them.

Frank was used to the sensation.

The protection his clothes offered spared him abrasions; he was more worried about the sound as he stirred the noisy morass with each motion. A note of panic was in his thumping heartbeat, his elevated pulse. But it was only a slender thread in a rope braided together out of experience, certitude, callousness. If he died, what of it? He was an engine running hot. Sooner or later he’d burn out; there was no point in slowing down. At the moment, he was alive, he was fast, he was free. The past wasn’t something that haunted him—it was fuel he could burn.

Finally he reached the Trattoria. He came up to his feet, flattening himself to the wall. Beside him was a barred window. Frank peeked through it. The view stretched through the interior of the restaurant to the three-part Venetian window that fronted the Trattoria. Through it, he saw the gathered guards. They were still taunting the man sent to shut off the car alarm. But there was one less of them.

Frank heard a flint being struck. Instantly it came to him: a cigarette lighter. A soldato leaving the group to have a cigarette, driven away by fear of secondhand smoke. He’d turned the corner and now, as he tried to work his lighter, he circled the building.

Frank had seconds before the man was in back of the Trattoria with him. Just enough time to sling his rifle and unsheathe his Ka-Bar.

The smoker turned the corner, his lighter finally catching. Frank lunged. His knife flashed through the air. It transfixed the smoker’s throat. A jet of blood shot over Frank, past him, dousing the bars of the Trattoria’s window. With his other hand, Frank socked him in the belly. The blow doubled him over. Doubling over pulled him through the knife in his throat like a wire through cheese. Frank felt the tip of his Ka-Bar stammer on the man’s spinal cord before it came free.

The smoker was down, no breath to call for help and breathing in nothing but blood. Frank stomped on his genitals to make sure he was incommunicado until the dying was finished, then took his gun from his shoulder holster just to be sure.

He had minutes before the smoker was missed. No place to hide him, no way to drag him up to the roof, and no way to wash away the blood. Frank made the curt decision to leave him bleeding out and go up the ladder. The grate was still in place, but he bent the severed links out of the way, coming up the grating in tiny squeals of protesting metal as he booted his way into footholds.

Frank was on the roof now, but he crouched low to avoid silhouetting himself. Even mobsters looked up once in a while. Making his way to the skylight, he took his burner phone from his pocket and punched in the number he’d memorized before coming here. The smoker’s gun he set aside as the phone dialed; he wouldn’t trust to a weapon maintained by anyone stupid enough to pollute their body that way.

He looked down through the skylight, willing someone to answer. There was an ever-present awareness that with every moment that passed, the dead man’s fatal smoking break was taking longer and longer. Something in him wanted to panic. He forced the fear to shut up and do its job: keeping him alert, keeping him alive. The longer he lived, the more of the Mob he could kill.

Below him, the occupants of the Trattoria milled about, entirely ignorant that the dead were outside and Death Itself was above.

***

Rico Toscani hated the Mafia. He hated that his angel investor was a devil who turned his sanctuary of community, tradition, and family into a backdrop for his brutality, his disregard for the society Rico was so proud to have been able to join.

He wanted to poison this foul creature, Vincenzo… to stab a knife into him instead of carving his turkey… to grab up one of the guns his thug brought into Rico's restaurant and use it to put a dozen holes in his belly, so all the meals Rico had fed him over the years sloughed back out.

He thought of his dog, though. Carmen. So rambunctious, barking at strangers and even hiding from longtime friends. Recently had his wife brought back their new son, but this Carmen was not suspicious of. She was endlessly curious about the baby, not scared of the new noisiness. But when they laid the babe on her blanket, Carmen was always there to lie nearby, happy to soak up attention from anyone who visited the child, and indulge his attempts to clumsily seize his wagging tail.

Rico wanted to see what was next. How they'd become friends, as close as he had been to his own boyhood dog. He could tolerate Vincenzo’s presence as many times as he had to, if what he bought with his tolerance was more time with his family.

Maggie approached him. It was hard to rue his lot when she, so young and innocent, was in the same situation. Vincenzo insisted on having her here. She wasn't mistreated, but Rico was old-fashioned. He knew it wasn't right for a young lady to be around so many rough men. She was frightened to have so many hard eyes on her, whether they did anything or not. they could do something and she wouldn't be able to stop them: this could not be forgotten.

“There's a phone call for you,” she told him.

Rico turned his head mostly to Vincenzo’s table. He had to keep an eye on his patron. This was a man who would not be ignored. “A phone call? Tell them we're closed. Private party.”

“I did. He said it was urgent.”

Rico thought of his wife, his son, his dog. He wondered if he could beg off serving Vincenzo if there was an emergency. “Go bring the customers some more wine. If he asks, tell him I'll be back in a moment.”

He went to the little transition between the dining area and the kitchen, where the turn of the walls sheltered a phone from the music and conversation of the customers. The handset fit awkwardly into his hand. His palm was sweaty.

“Hello,” he said brusquely. “Who is this? I'm very busy.”

“Shut up and listen. Don't talk except to say yes or no. You and your waitress are the only ones in the restaurant who aren't mobbed up, correct?”

Rico couldn't believe someone would talk about the Mob so openly. Didn't he know Rico had only to mention this to Vincenzo and his soldatos would be hunting this man down? “Who is this?”

“Yes or no, answer right now.”

Something about the man's voice told Rico he was serious. That whatever he was doing was no lark. “Yes.”

“Everyone else is a Belucci or Scaglione?”

“Yes.”

“Take your waitress. Go to the freezer and lock yourselves inside. Do it in the next thirty seconds or you're dead. “

The line went quiet. For a moment, Rico debated what to do, but his decision had been made long ago. This was just the first time the choice had been his.