Until now, I thought, thinking of Dez Romano and Michael DeSanto. But I didn’t want to stop Elena from talking.

But she did anyway. Her words died away and she dropped her head into her hands. My aunt began to weep softly. For a moment or two, I didn’t move, didn’t do anything. I stared at the empty seat in front of us. Then I looked back at Elena. I didn’t know how to comfort her, didn’t understand exactly what she needed comforting about. Her tears grew more powerful then, her back began to tremble.

I saw Maggie stand in the aisle, a number of seats in front of us, a sad, concerned look on her face. She held up her hands. Do you need anything?

I shrugged then shook my head no.

It was killing me to see my aunt in that state, so I put my arm around her shoulder. I tried to pull her close, but aside from the sobs that shook her body, she was as stiff as a block of wood. I kept squeezing her a little, kept drawing her ever so slightly nearer. Finally, she seemed to succumb. She crumpled a little, her shoulders sagging farther. She turned her head and placed her forehead on my shoulder. And then, even though I didn’t know why, tears began to stream down my cheeks, as well.

Maggie was kneeling in her seat now, turned around and watching us. She looked agonized.

Eventually, Elena’s sobs were reduced to gulping tears, and eventually those diminished into sniffles. But finally, she’d had enough. My aunt sat up.

“Grazie,” she said to me.

“Prego.”

She took a tissue from her bag and dabbed at her eyes, rimmed in red now. “Allora,” she said. “Now I will tell you more.”

According to my aunt, my father was careful while he worked for the FBI, so careful, she said, that the System did not seem to realize it was Christopher McNeil, the Camorra’s star whose cover was being a police psychologist, who was the cause of their undoing. And so it was all going fine, Elena said, until Christopher brought down the wrong person-the brother of her husband, Maurizio.

Elena knew the whole time what Christopher was doing. She was the only one, aside from his FBI handlers. He’d told her so she would understand that he was not truly in the System, that he was trying to right the grave wrong of their father’s death.

“But when he told me that he had targeted Paulo, Maurizio’s brother, and that they were about to bring him down, I begged him not to do it,” she said. “I told him, you cannot do this. This is my husband’s brother. Paulo is like you are to me. Maurizio loves him as I love you. If you do this, the entire family will collapse. Paulo is the patriarch of this family. He is the reason we all have money. Paulo takes care of everyone.”

“Is Maurizio part of the System?”

“Yes.” Elena dabbed her eyes again. “I didn’t know it when I met him. I didn’t know that nearly everyone I met when I moved to Italy was Camorra.”

“Did you ever live in Naples? I thought the Camorra was only in Naples?”

She smiled grimly. “The Camorra’s stronghold is in Napoli. Their home is Napoli, but they are everywhere. They are in Rome. In fact, it is easier for them to operate from Rome, where they are still not expected to be strong.”

“So you and Maurizio stayed in Rome after you were married?”

“Yes, but the family had a house in Napoli, too, and so we went back and forth. It was a very good life.” She sighed. “You must understand that I have known Maurizio since I was seventeen. When my family had all deserted me-or at least that’s how I felt when I was moved to Rome -it was Maurizio’s distant family who took me into their fold, introducing me to him.”

“Your father was killed by the Camorra and yet you moved to Italy and moved in with them? I don’t understand.”

“Isabel, please don’t try to understand this in a simple frame. There is nothing simple about the Camorra. As I told you before, my mother’s family was traditionally Camorra, but many members of the family did not want to be defined by that. Many chose not to participate, others did, but even if someone did work with the Camorra, it didn’t mean that the entire family was a part of it. I believe my mother thought I was safe, because I went to her family in Rome, not Napoli, and all the Camorra members that she knew were from Napoli.”

A pause. Then I decided to say what I was thinking. “It sounds like you were a sacrificial lamb.”

The muscles in her face tensed, then she laughed. “That is what your father once said, too. But by then it was too late. I was part of Maurizio’s family-my only family, it felt like-and they were part of me. And it was okay for a long while, because although your father knew Maurizio’s family was Camorra, his clan wasn’t trying to work in the United States, so he wasn’t part of any operation that your father was focusing on. But then Paulo began to move into America, and it came under your father’s jurisdiction, and then there was this operation to bring him down. As I said, I begged him not to.”

“And how did my father respond?” How strange it was to speak those words-my father-and be referring to someone alive, someone I was about to meet. Again.

“Your father was torn. On one hand, it was his job to stop people in the System. And I had always understood what he was doing. But now there he was, bringing down one of my family members. We were going to have no money left if Paulo went down. And we all loved him. Despite what he does with the System, for work, he is a good man in many ways. I finally decided I had to let them know, the people who were my family now. I told Maurizio and his brother what was going to happen and that it was going to occur very soon. When they didn’t believe me, I finally had to tell them why I knew this-because my brother was an undercover agent for the FBI. And he was spying on the System.” She shook her head now and looked up.

I stayed silent.

“Can you understand how torn I was?” Her eyes beseeched mine.

“Yes, of course.”

She slipped her sunglasses back on. “It was horrid. I wanted so desperately to protect my brother, but I also wanted to protect my husband and his family, my life. I had already lost one life, you know. I couldn’t bear the thought of the death of yet another.”

“What happened?”

She dropped her head and began to sob again.

“What?” I said. “What happened?”

A few more shuddering cries, then she restrained herself. “They couldn’t get to Christopher. Not right away. Being with the police force and having protection from the FBI meant he was not an easy person to reach.” She looked out the window then back at me. She took off her sunglasses, and her eyes were dead. “So they killed my mother.”

“Grandma O died in a car crash in Phoenix.”

“Is that what you were told?”

I thought back to that time. I’d been eight years old, and although I hadn’t spent much time with her, I was fond of Grandma O. I liked her musical voice, the way she broke into songs in Italian whenever there was a tense moment. She was funny like that-she could defuse almost any situation.

And then one day, my father sat me down and said that Grandma O had died.

“Yes, I think so,” I said to Elena. “My father told me…” I drifted off for a second, thinking. “He told me that she had problems with her car and she died. I assumed it was an accident. I felt like that’s what he was saying.”

Elena squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. “I’m sure that is the impression he was trying to give you, but the truth was that her car exploded. The official story from the police was she had put a propane tank in the trunk and the propane tank leaked and ignited when she started the car. But I know that wasn’t true.” She grimaced. “Or rather, it was true, but she had not placed it there. One of the System’s men did and he turned the tank on so that it was leaking.”