“I know you’re there, Contessa.” He brought the hammer down again.

“Don’t you have people to do this for you?”

He tossed the hammer down as if he was done with the day’s violence. “It’s my house, and demo’s too much fun to delegate.” His face was covered in dust, sweat, and a smile.

“You should hire yourself,” I said.

“Like it?”

“It’ll be nice once you mop. Dust. You know, maybe a few pictures on the wall.” I swept my hand to the view of the city, the busted everything, the sheer potential.

“Let me show you.” He headed out an archway, indicating I should follow.

He led me onto a balcony on the west side of the house. The terra-cotta floor looked to be in good shape, and the cast-iron railing curled in on itself, making a floral design I’d never seen.

“I love this view,” I said, understating the grandeur of the ocean of lights. “I could look out on this all night.”

He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and poked one out. I refused his offer, and he took out a big metal lighter.

“Sit here at night, have a glass of wine. Or in the morning, a cup of coffee, just look over the city.” He lit his cigarette with a click clack, his profile something out of an art history class. He put his fingertips to the back of my neck, his stroke so delicate I didn’t lean into it, just stayed as still as I could.

“You had a question?” he asked, tracing the line where my shirt met my skin.

“Are you a leprechaun?” I asked.

“Only when St. Patrick’s Day lands on a full moon.” He was smiling, but I could see the question had confused him.

“I’m sorry. I had a real question, but I forgot which one I picked.”

Because they were all ridiculous, of course. If he was some cartoon capo, he’d have a dozen guys around him all the time. He’d wear pinstripes and a fedora. He’d carry a gun. He’d say capisce a lot.

“Do I get any questions?” he asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“I’m an open book.”

He laughed softly, smoke trailing behind him. “Right. Open, but in a different language.”

He gave me an idea.

“I’m not going to ask you a question,” I said. “I’m going to tell you what happened to me today.”

“Let me make you coffee.”

The kitchen was in bad but useable shape. The beige marbled tiles with little mirrored squares every few feet, dark wood cabinets, and avocado appliances told me the place hadn’t been redone since the seventies.

Antonio sat me in a folding chair at a beat up pine table. “Best I have for now.”

“You living here during all this mess?”

“No. I have another place.” He gave no more information. “Do you like espresso? I have some hot still.”

“Sure.”

He poured from a chrome double brewer into two small blue cups. “Does it keep you up?”

“Nope.”

“Good. A real woman.” He brought the cups and a lemon to the table and set a cup before me. I reached for the handle, but he made a little tch tch noise. “Not yet.” He cradled the lemon in one palm and a little knife in the other. “What happened to you today?”

“Today, my assistant found a picture of us in the paper.”

“Saw that,” he said, cutting a strip of lemon peel. “You looked sexy as hell. I wanted to fuck you all over again.”

If he was trying to get my body to turn into a puddle of desire, it was working. “Everyone saw it.”

“Everyone want to fuck you as bad as I did?”

“My ex-fiancé showed up.”

“The Candidate…” He dropped a yellow curlicue into my saucer. “Bet he regrets what he did, no?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

I reached for the espresso, but he stopped me again, plucking the rind from my saucer and rubbing it on the edge of my cup.

“Do you want Sambuca?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He reached back, plucked a bottle from a line of them, and unscrewed the top. “In Napoli, the men point their pinkies up when they drink espresso to show their refinement. Once they’ve been here long enough, they drink like Americans.” He poured a little Sambuca into our cups.

“How do the women drink?”

“Quickly, before the children pull on their skirts.”

I sipped the drink. It was good, thick, rich. I took a bigger mouthful but didn’t gulp.

“So there’s a picture in the paper of us, and let’s not play tricks with each other,” he said. “It looked like we’re intimate.”

“It did.”

“Next to a picture of you and him.” He picked up his cup.

I followed suit. “Yes.”

“And he runs to your office, how many hours later? One? A half? Or are we measuring in minutes?”

We looked at each other over our cups.

“I don’t see that it matters.” I blew on the black liquid, the ripples releasing the licorice scent of the Sambuca.

He smirked. “Maybe it doesn’t. What did it take him one to sixty minutes to tell you?”

“That you run an organized crime empire.”

He said nothing at first, just put his espresso to his lips and drank. He kept his pinky down, holding the demitasse with his curled fist. “I’m very impressed with me.” He clicked the cup to saucer. “Less so with him. I might have to vote Drummond.”

“I looked into it after he left, once I knew what I was looking for. You’re being investigated for all kinds of fraud. Insurance. Real estate. And you don’t want me to ask questions, so what am I supposed to think?”

“Is that your question?” he asked. “What are you supposed to think? I have an answer for that one.”

“I don’t have an actual question. I know you haven’t been convicted of anything, and I know what we had was just a casual screw.”

“It wasn’t casual.”

“We can’t make any commitments to each other. And that’s fine. But I don’t sleep with strangers. If you’re going to continue to be a stranger, then I can’t do this.”

He closed his eyes and cocked his head left, then right, as if stretching before a boxing match. “I have a history, and it followed me here.”

I sat back. “Go on.”

“My father didn’t exist to me. My mother shooed off the idea of him. Like she made me herself, out of nothing. I didn’t know who my father was until I was eleven. I had some business, and he was the man one went to with business.”

“At eleven? What business did you have at that age?”

“It’s a different world over there. Things need to be taken care of. If the trash wasn’t getting picked up, you went to Benito Racossi. If the delivery boy was stealing from your mother, you went to Racossi. My mother rarely left the apartment, and my sister… Well, I’d never send her to a man like that. But once I met him, I saw it.” He made a quick oval around his face. “Like looking in a mirror, but older.”

“He was your father?”

“He didn’t deny it. Took me under his wing. Gave me work. Legal work. Anything he had to keep me out of trouble. My mother? It nearly killed her. She didn’t want me in the life. She never believed I didn’t do anything illegal. Neither did the polizia. Neither did Interpol. Neither does Daniel Brower, who’s going to make my life hell if he’s mayor. But as God is my witness, every business I have runs because I watched how my father did it, but I’ve never imitated what he did. So I’ll tell you this once and swear to it, I’ve beaten every charge against me and I’ll beat everything they put on my back because I’m clean.”

“I believe you.”

“Don’t put me in a position where I have to defend myself against this again.”

He was so definite, so stern, so parental that I didn’t think I could spend another second in his presence. I stood. “If asking you questions turns you into an ass, I’ll be sure to only make declarative statements on the infinitely small chance I ever see you again. Thanks for the coffee.”

I spun on my heel and walked out of the kitchen, winding up in a room I hadn’t come through. Then I found another with a broken stone staircase. I didn’t feel him following me until a second before he grabbed me and pushed me toward a leaded glass window.