Maggie grimaced. “Guess not.”

She turned and led me back to the seats. Maggie took the one across from my father. I nodded my thanks and took the seat across from Elena.

Maurizio’s body had been left in an area where they were sure to find him today. We had convinced Elena to come with us, despite the fact that she desperately wanted to be in Italy to plan funeral services for her husband. However, my father was certain that the Camorra would question Elena in detail about Maurizio’s killing, and because her niece had been asking around about her father, the Camorra would soon, if they hadn’t already, figure out that Christopher McNeil was not only alive but involved in Maurizio’s death. My father was also certain that although an extreme loyalty existed in the System, they wouldn’t be so kind to Elena as they had in the past, not when they realized that she had known the whole time that her brother was alive. And working against them.

My poor aunt was understandably distraught. She sat on her ivory leather chair, fiddling her hands in her lap as if she could not decide what to do with them. She glanced up at me a few times, seemed to be on the verge of tears. I spoke to her softly, trying to comfort her, but all I could say was, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s my fault,” she said. “My fault.”

But even as I failed in comforting her, I began to wonder if I should blame myself. It was my curiosity, my wanting to find my father that led me to Italy, that led Elena to take me to his office, that led Maurizio to follow us, that led my father to kill him.

Determined to be of service and not the source of more agony, I tried a few more times to say something appropriately soothing to Elena, but when she shook her head, fast and for a long time, as if she could not stand any words, any thoughts, anything, I stopped.

My father had killed someone. I returned to that thought as I looked out an oval window while we slowly began to taxi the runway. My father had killed someone. In his line of work, the possibility that he had killed more than one person was a distinct one. The recognition of this fact was as bizarre and surreal as the rest of the experience. I kept looking at him, one row up, thinking that I did not know this man. Not at all.

Maggie tried to make small talk with my father. Actually, as the plane began to pick up speed, she was quite successful. Soon she had him interested in a story about a Mafia case she’d handled, where the sheriff in charge of taking the alleged mobsters to court had tracked down one of their key witnesses, and then let the mobsters know where that witness was.

“Of course the whole thing was taped,” Maggie said. “So the sheriff was arrested. And when they questioned him, they asked him, why did you give them that information? He said it was because he had grown up in the same neighborhood as the mobsters and twenty years ago they had given his sister money for a dentist visit. Twenty years ago.”

My father nodded. “There is a lot of loyalty in the Mafia.” His voice was clear and smooth but he always spoke in a low register, as if not wanting it to carry.

There it was-that talk of loyalty again. Before I knew what I was saying, my voice rang out louder than anyone’s, clearly ringing out over the plane’s engines. “And you have that kind of loyalty, too, right? You really know about loyalty.” Oops. There was that anger bubbling up again, speaking for me. And it was laced with sarcasm, something I’m not usually prone to.

Christopher turned and looked at me in the row behind him, no expression on his face. Maggie turned, too, eyebrows raised.

I leaned forward and squinted at him, irritated beyond control. “What?” I said. “Why are you giving me that blank look like you don’t know what I’m talking about? It sounds to me like there’s loyalty to ‘the family’-this Mob family-and obviously you had a lot of loyalty to your father, because you did all this to avenge what happened to him, and I respect that, but where was your loyalty to your family? The one you created with my mother?”

My father said nothing. We stared at each other for a long time. I had no idea how to read him. Was he angry at me? Wounded by what I said? I couldn’t tell.

Finally, he broke the stalemate. “Are you ready to have this conversation, Isabel?”

The plane launched itself into the air, and I nodded.

“We believe they are returning to America now,” La Duca said in Italian.

Dez clenched the phone then tried to make himself unclench it. “Are they on a flight?”

“Sí, we assume so. They did not take Alitalia or any commercial flights. My men followed them as far as a regional airport before they lost them. Christopher McNeil is good.” La Duca ’s voice wasn’t livid as he reported that. He was the kind of boss that respected proficiency in others. Not that he wouldn’t still kill the man when he got the chance. “We believe they are on a jet.”

Dez fully released his grip on the phone.

“Which means,” La Duca continued, “that you acted quickly, just as I asked you to do. You did something to get them to return immediately. Complementi.”

Complementi was the Italian way of saying nice work, good job. And La Duca was not the type to toss praise easily.

“Grazie,” Dez said simply.

“This is your show now.”

“I’ve got it,” Dez said with authority.

“You are sure?”

Dez knew La Duca was speaking as much about Dez proving himself as he was about taking out the McNeil family.

“Certo,” Dez said. “All of them.”

“I ask that you will be discreet.”

Dez froze. “You are asking me to conduct this operation in quiet?”

“Sí. You and I will know. But the news will not go up. At least not until it is all done.”

They both knew what La Duca meant. The act that Dez had planned was splashy, one might say explosive, so the act wasn’t really going to be done in quiet. What La Duca was speaking of, though, was that the planning of the McNeils’ deaths would be kept between the two of them. It wouldn’t go up, which meant it wouldn’t reach the top-the top boss of the Camorra. The top boss was the one who, it was said, let the clans duke it out so that he was the only one who saw everything clearly.

“There is something strange,” La Duca continued, “very strange about the McNeils. Christopher McNeil has been a thorn in our side for entirely too long. I want us to handle this quietly. Later, we can reveal how and when it was done.”

Dez liked the words us and we coming from La Duca ’s mouth. He had hoped that by handling this situation well he would prove himself immediately to the top. He had also put a plan into action for learning the identity of the one at the top. Although La Duca didn’t know it, that second part of the plan was still in play.

“You place your trust correctly,” Dez said finally.

What was about to happen would be very Camorra, and yet it would also be very American Camorra, putting the U.S. and Chicago on the radar of the System in the same way Spain and Madrid had done in the past. His nerves tweaked a bit in anticipation. The game had already started. The McNeil brother, little Charlie, was already installed at the place where it would go down. As Dez had hoped, his abduction had drawn an immediate response from Isabel McNeil and her daddy. Isabel McNeil, who had seemed such a problem, was turning out to be his solution.

“Christopher McNeil is good,” La Duca said again. “For him to evade the Camorra for years, to trick us like this, is incredible. And worthy of caution. We have been able to find out little about where he lived or what he did during these twenty years since we thought we killed him. But we are certain now that he has been working for the antimafia office, working against the System. You should be careful of him.”