Chapter 1: The Language of the Dead
The car didn’t smell like leather.
It smelled like smoke.
Not fresh smoke—old smoke. The kind that clings to walls long after a fire is gone.
I didn’t move. Lorenzo didn’t let go of my wrist.
“That accent belongs to ghosts,” he repeated, softer this time.
I forced myself to meet his eyes. “Maybe you should stop talking to them, then.”
Silvio, in the front seat, shifted uncomfortably. Dante didn’t move at all.
Lorenzo studied me like I was something pulled out of a grave.
“Say it again,” he said.
“Say what?”
“What you said at the table.”
I leaned back slightly, though his grip tightened. “You already understood it.”
“I want to hear if I imagined it.”
I didn’t blink.
“You didn’t imagine it,” I said in the same old Palermo dialect. “And neither did the man you buried to keep that secret.”
Silvio cursed under his breath.
Dante’s gun clicked.
Lorenzo didn’t react immediately. That was worse.
“Pull over,” he said quietly.
The car stopped on an empty street.
Then he turned to me.
“Start explaining,” he said, “before I decide you’re lying.”
I smiled slightly.
“Three years ago,” I said, “your men set fire to a house near Via Maqueda.”
His eyes flickered.
“There was supposed to be no survivors,” I continued. “But there was one.”
May you like
Silence.
“And now,” I said, “she’s sitting in your car.”
