Tommy reaches for the notebooks greedily, his hands outstretched wide in unabashed desire.
Sofia stretches her hand out to give Tommy the notebooks, to start a war between Tommy Fianzo’s Family and Eli’s. To save her husband. Sofia can feel her heartbeat in her fingers, her toes, thumping through the building itself. Tommy raises his head to listen. He can hear it too. The clang of blood in Sofia’s head sounds like feet hitting metal. And then the door to the office bursts open, and for the second time in as many days, Sofia gasps at the sight of Saul.
* * *
—
Saul’s breath is heavy from running up the stairs. A pen falls from Tommy Fianzo Jr.’s desk to the ground. It is the most ordinary clatter in the world.
“Saul Colicchio,” says Tommy, with barely suppressed delight. “Just the traitorous bastard I was hoping to see.” And then he has the nerve to look at Sofia, as if hoping for some praise. Good line, he might want her to say.
Sofia doesn’t notice because she is looking at Saul, who is looking back at her. “I’m so sorry,” he says, which is the most inadequate thing that has ever come out of his mouth. “I understand,” she says, which is the most inadequate thing that has ever come out of hers.
“Against the wall,” says Tommy Fianzo Jr., and it is not just inadequate, but unnecessary, because he is pointing a gun at Sofia. “Let’s all take a walk.” And Sofia understands that whatever tenuous moment of understanding she might have been building toward with Tommy Fianzo Jr. has been lost, and with it, any hope she and Saul have of getting out of this unscathed. Of getting out of it at all.
* * *
—
The cab pulls up short a few blocks away from the docks. Next to Antonia in the backseat, Paolo takes her hand. “Please stay here,” he begs her.
“I love you,” she responds.
（Paolo and Antonia, seventeen years old, ran out of things to say halfway through their first date. Words seemed entirely insufficient.）
Antonia opens the car door and slips out. She begins to run, alone.
It is noon, but it looks like evening. The air smells like metal and engine oil, like every evening of Antonia’s childhood, the kitchen window in Sofia’s apartment open to the slow breeze coming off the East River. The way the air can smell like the ocean and the city all at once.
Antonia is alight with energy. The deepest parts of her have been pulled up to the surface of her skin.
And of course, Antonia is not alone. She has Sofia with her. She has Carlo. And because she stopped upstairs in Sofia’s apartment before getting in a cab, she has a gleaming, heavy, fully loaded pearl-handled pistol.
* * *
—
Paolo is running to catch up with Antonia. She is stealthy, quick, better at this than Paolo would have guessed, moving from dumpster to shipping container, sheltering herself.
In front of the Fianzo building there stands a guard. Antonia cannot see him from her vantage point behind a tall metal pylon. Paolo can see that when Antonia moves again, she will cross right into the guard’s line of sight. He runs.
As a child, Paolo was scrappy. Three older brothers and the bloody path home from school had beaten into him the importance of self-defense, and defense of those you loved. Paolo was well-known in his neighborhood, and not just for his handwriting.
Paolo’s fist connects with the Fianzo guard’s face before the guard even has time to register that anyone is approaching. Paolo draws back his right fist again but then jabs viciously with his left, hitting just under the guard’s rib cage. The soft flesh there collapses; the guard lets out a whoosh of breath. Paolo elbows him in the face. Something cracks. I love you, Paolo thinks, picturing Saul and Antonia. The Fianzo guard slips into a blissful unconsciousness. Paolo leaves the guard bruised and bloodied, draped over the concrete steps. He takes off after Antonia. I love you, he prays.
* * *
—
Antonia sticks to the shadows. She hopes Saul and Sofia will be there. She hopes they will not be there. She moves as slowly as she can bear, as quietly, as carefully as anyone ever has.
In the distance, toward the river, there is a small cloud of seagulls flapping and keening. Recently disturbed.
Sofia.
Antonia stands. She is at the edge of the ocean.
Come on, Carlo says.
Antonia is all storm, all clash and fury. The summer air is still but in her ears wind roars.
* * *
—
Sofia and Antonia, playing make-believe, once started a war in Sofia’s bedroom. They vanquished the entire army. They were the only survivors.
* * *