I had started to understand something about Vito , he couldn’t say no to me. Not really. He would press his lips together and look away and pretend he was considering it, but he always gave in. I don’t think he even realized he was doing it. I noticed, though. I noticed everything about him.

That night, after my nightmare, he’d let me curl up beside him without a word of complaint. I fell asleep holding his sleeve, and I woke up still holding it. He was already studying by the time I stirred, and I spent the morning doing what I’d been doing for days , hovering close, as if being near him meant nothing could reach me.

"Vito," I said, draping myself over his back and wiggling my fingers against his shoulder blades. "Can we go outside? I haven’t seen the sun in days. I’m starting to forget what it looks like."

"In a couple of days," he said, not looking up from his notes.

"Why a couple of days?" I climbed onto his lap, which he tolerated with a long exhale. I looped my arms around his neck. "Vito. Please. Take me outside now."

He was about to answer.

The door flew open before he could.

The change that moved through Vito in that instant was immediate and physical , he pushed me off his lap without thinking, standing so fast his chair scraped the floor. His whole body went still in a way that wasn’t stillness at all. It was the opposite of stillness. It was everything held back at once.

"Dad," he said.

Three people stood in the doorway. Wisteria was there, her expression carrying the particular satisfaction of someone who had arranged for something unpleasant to happen. Hamilton was behind her. And in front of them both stood a man I hadn’t seen before , tall, broad, with Vito’s same jaw and Vito’s same eyes, except none of the warmth.

I didn’t know any of this yet. All I saw was that he looked like Vito, and Vito and Yael were good people, so I smiled at him.

"Hello, sir."

He looked at me like I was something he’d found on the bottom of his shoe.

"Dominic," the man said, and his voice landed in the room like something heavy dropped from a height. "Is this how your son was raised? Sheltering the enemy’s daughter under your roof? If Wisteria hadn’t come to me, I’d have had no idea."

Vito’s father , Dominic , turned his eyes on Vito, and the weight of it was its own kind of punishment. "Explain yourself."

Wisteria didn’t wait. "Uncle Dominic, what is there to explain? The last of that bloodline should be gone. Don’t forget everything we’ve lost. Everything we’ve suffered."

Yael wandered through the adults without reading any of the tension in the room. "Wipe, wipe, wipe," he parroted cheerfully, echoing the last word he’d caught.

Vito looked at him once. It was a very small look. Yael’s mouth snapped shut, and he pressed both hands over it.

Then Vito spoke, and his voice had changed. It was flat. Deliberate. The warmth was gone from it completely , packed away somewhere I couldn’t reach. "Dad. Killing her won’t change anything. She’s a child. Her death means nothing."

"Oh?" Dominic’s tone was quiet in that particular way that isn’t quiet at all. "Then what do you suggest?"

"Let her live a life worse than death."

I stared at him. I stared at the side of his face because he wouldn’t look at me, and I tried to find the Vito who had braided my hair yesterday, who had fed me medicine and popped candy into my mouth and said I’ll protect you like he meant it more than anything.

He wasn’t there. In his place was someone with the same face and no expression at all.

Wisteria leaned forward. "Uncle Dominic, don’t listen to him. He’s protecting her. He’s been protecting her this whole time."

"I have not forgotten the blood feud." Vito’s voice dropped lower, harder. The air around him changed the way air changes before a storm , pressure building, something dark underneath the surface. "I want to put her somewhere she has nothing. Make her spend every day knowing what she came from and what it cost."

A long silence.

"Good," Dominic said finally. "I’d started to wonder."

"Grandpa’s memorial is coming up. I want to take her to Snake Island. For atonement." He said the last word like it tasted like something he’d chosen to swallow.

Dominic rubbed his temple. The authority that came off him was different from Vito’s , older, harder, the kind that had been carved by years rather than inherited. "Fine. You’ll visit your mother while you’re there. Stay put until then." He looked at Wisteria when she started to protest. "You’re heading to Dark Island soon, Wisteria. That should be taking all your attention. It’s not a place people come back from easily."

She went quiet.

They left. And something left with them , something that had been making the room feel safe.

Vito didn’t look at me. He moved to the desk and sat down, and the distance between us was only a few feet but felt much wider than that. I didn’t understand what had just happened, only that the shape of things had shifted.

Then Dominic came back. Just him, closing the door behind him.

"Now that we’re alone," he said, "don’t take me for a fool. I know what you’ve been doing. You’ve been shielding this girl."

"I haven’t."

"She’s gained weight since she arrived." His voice was flat and final. "That is not how we treat our enemies. Don’t forget who’s buried in that chamber. Don’t forget what they took from us. Come with me."

Vito stood and followed him without looking back.

I tried to follow.

"Don’t." He didn’t turn around. One word, said in a voice I didn’t recognize, and it stopped me completely.

The door to the stone chamber closed.

I stood very still, listening. The sounds that came through the stone were muffled, but I understood them. I had heard enough in my short life to know what pain sounds like when someone is trying not to make it.

When the door opened again, Dominic filled the frame. His eyes passed over me like I was furniture. I stepped back without meaning to , something in my body did it before my mind caught up.

Yael appeared and ran to him, grabbing his leg. "Dada! Tummy growling!"

Dominic lifted him, tapping his forehead gently. The hardness in his face shifted just slightly, enough to let through something almost soft. He carried Yael away, grumbling about proper speech.

I went inside.

The room was dim, lit by candles that threw long shadows across the walls. There was a table at the center with a carved memorial tablet on it, the kind families keep for the dead. And in front of it, Vito knelt on the stone floor, shirtless, his head bowed, his back marked with fresh wounds that hadn’t been there this morning.

Something broke open in my chest.

I ran to him. I didn’t think. I just ran, and I threw my arms around him, and I was crying before I even knew I’d started.

"Vito , does it hurt?"

He turned his head. He looked at me with those eyes , and then, slowly, he lifted one hand and touched my face. He forced a smile that cost him something. "No. It doesn’t hurt. Don’t cry, okay?"

"Why did your dad hit you?"

"Because I made a mistake," he said quietly. "I deserved it."

He was still kneeling, still in pain, and he pulled me close anyway. His arms came around me and held on, and I felt the uneven rhythm of his breathing against my hair.

"I’ll protect you, Anna."

I didn’t understand yet , not really , what it meant for someone like Vito to make a promise like that. I was too young to know that some promises run deeper than blood, deeper than the instincts that drive everything a person like him does. I didn’t understand that he’d just taken punishment for me and was kneeling in front of his grandfather’s memorial and still choosing, with everything broken open around him, to hold onto me instead.

I just knew he was hurting. And I held on as tight as I could.