I told him I had bought it in the park. “You can have it if you want but it might be terrible.”

I went into the kitchen to get water. For a second, the tap wouldn’t start running and an awful breathy banging sound came from the pipes. I wondered if this would be the day the water ran out. But, finally, the water started.

BITTER SCHOKOLADE,

When I got back to my room, I found Win studying the chocolate. He had taken off the jacket, and he was holding out the gold foil–wrapped bar. “Look, it’s not Balanchine,” he said. “The paper looks like it is, but underneath it’s something else.”

“Yeah, I thought that might happen,” I said. “I bought it in front of Little Egypt. The jacket was off,

so I thought it would probably be some generic brand underneath.”

“It’s not generic.” Win held out the foil-wrapped bar so I could read it:

HERGESTELLT FÜR BITTER SCHOKOLADEN GMBH, MÜNCHEN.

“At the funeral, someone was saying that they were the perennial fourth-place chocolate family in Germany,” I said quietly. “Mickey’s wife’s family actually. You remember Sophia…” Sophia Bitter Balanchine. Sophia M. Bitter Balanchine. Sophia Marquez Bitter Balanchine. The former Sophia Marquez Bitter, who Theo’s oldest sister hadn’t liked. Sophia Marquez Bitter, who had once been engaged to Yuji Ono …

Everywhere I had been, she had been first. Bitter Chocolate under a Balanchine wrapper.

Who would have had the ability to orchestrate supply-wide poisoning? Who would have had the ability to execute a three-country hit?

Who would Yuji Ono have protected over me?

I dropped the bar on the floor. Because it was thin and stale and cheap, it broke into several pieces.

It was obvious. I had been so stupid. Again.

I had to sit down.

“Annie, are you all right?” Win asked.

I was about to lie: to tell him I wasn’t feeling well and that I’d see him tomorrow; walk him to the elevator; then, I’d go back into my room, close the door, and puzzle this out alone. But the truth was I hadn’t done that well with this method—that is to say, solitude. Win knew plenty of appalling things about me, and he was still here.

I took a deep breath. “What if Sophia Bitter was the one who arranged the Fretoxin poisoning? That was about the time she came to New York to marry Mickey. And Theo’s sister says that Sophia was once engaged to Yuji Ono.”

Win nodded. “But Jacks confessed to it, didn’t he?”

“No one really believes he did it, though,” I said. “I think someone in the family convinced him to confess because he was going to jail for shooting the district attorney’s son.”

“Right, him,” Win said. “He who thought he was going to prom. Him.”

“Him—you.” I paused to kiss him on the mouth. “The point is, Jacks would have had to go to jail either way. So it could have just as well been someone else.”

Natty came into the kitchen. She was wearing her pajamas and rubbing the sleep out of the corners of her eyes. “If Bitter Chocolate is really the fourth-place chocolate company in Germany,” Natty said, “maybe Sophia thought she could improve their standing by expanding the business into America. Listen—she marries Mickey, just to get close enough to destroy the Balanchines. Or at least, to take over the business herself.”

“When did you wake up?” I asked her. “Now. You two are loud. Hi, Win,” she said.

“Natty, my gal,” Win greeted her. “The question is, did Mickey help her, or will this be news to him, too?”

“And also, did she arrange to have Leo killed?” Natty added. “And did she try to kill Annie and me?”

“Aside from Yuji Ono, I think she was the only one who had the reach to arrange such a hit,” I said.

Natty sighed.

“What are we going to do?” Win asked.

We. It was presumptuous of him, but I felt better all the same. “I’m not sure yet,” I said. If she really was the one who had killed Leo, I might need to do some very hard things. But like Charles Delacroix had said, first I needed to make sure. And I needed to find out who her conspirators had been. Also, while it was pleasant to have Win and Natty to go over things with, I wasn’t ready to admit to them that I might need to kill someone. “I’m going to visit Jacks,” I said. “He might have some information and he’s been bothering me to come see him for months.”

I kneeled down and picked up the broken pieces of the Bitter Chocolate bar and threw them into the trash. I took the gold-foil wrapper. I was about to put it in my pocket when Natty took it from me. She folded it in half so that it was squarish and then she folded it several more times. When she handed it back to me, the paper had taken the form of a small, gold dragon.

“Hey, where’d you learn that?” Win wanted to know. “Genius camp,” she told him.

So you see, I thought. It hadn’t all been for nothing.

THERE WERE NO VISITING HOURS at Rikers Island on Mondays and Tuesdays. I didn’t go on Wednesday either, because the visitation schedule was determined by last name. After some research, I determined that Jacks’s day was Thursday. I also read an exhaustively detailed dress code: among other things, no swimsuits, ripped or see-through clothing, spandex, hats, hoods, or uniforms. It also stated that “visitors to Rikers must wear underwear.” (NB: There had not been the remotest chance that I wouldn’t.)

The prohibition against uniforms put me in mind of the fact that I was no longer a student at Holy Trinity. Life had been so much easier with a uniform. As I was dressing that morning, it occurred to me that I would need to come up with a new uniform for myself. But, what? A uniform was meant to reflect your station in life. I was no longer college-bound or even a student. With a long list of offenses under my belt, I was not likely to become a criminologist. I was no longer an inmate at Liberty. I was no longer a cacao farmer. I was no longer my brother’s keeper. Or my sister’s either. Natty seemed increasingly able to keep herself.

At the moment, I was nothing more or less than a girl with an infamous last name and a vendetta or two.

But what to wear for avenging my slain brother?

I had to take two different buses to get to Rikers, and then I had to register, and finally I was led into a room with tables and chairs bolted to the floor. I would rather have visited Jacks behind a plastic screen with a phone like you see in those old movies, but I guess my cousin wasn’t considered dangerous enough to merit such precautions.

I sat down, and about ten minutes later, Jacks was brought into the room.

“Thanks for coming, Annie,” he said. My cousin’s appearance was much altered since the last time I’d seen him. He had shaved his head. His nose had clearly been broken in multiple places, though it was healed for the moment, and one of his cheekbones had a disturbing flatness to it. He also had fresh stitches above his eyebrow. “I’m not the pretty boy I used to be, eh, cousin?”

“You were never that pretty,” I said though I could not help but pity Jacks. He’d always been so vain about his appearance.

Jacks laughed, and he sat across the table from me.

I had things I wanted to know from him, of course, but the best way of dealing with Jacks was to let him talk.

“You finally came,” he commented.

“You’ve only been begging me to for months,” I said.

Jacks shook his head. “Nah, that’s not why you came. No one loves Jacks. You’re probably still holding a grudge ’cause I shot your boyfriend. You just want something.”

I looked at the clock. “What could you possibly have that I want?” “Like I wrote. Information,” Jacks said.

True enough. “Your father’s dead,” I told him.

“Yuri, yeah, I heard. Who cares? That man was no type of father to me.”