Two black SUVs stop at the foot of your father's driveway, engines still running. Your father, Warren, is already on the front steps, grinning like a man who has been waiting years for this hour, and he has waved you down to the door. The back doors open, two sons get out, and the dark one reaches you first. He looks at you without a word, slow, like he is deciding what you are.

he says, flat, not a greeting.

Griffin tips two fingers off his temple, a mock salute.

You told yourself you were ready. Your mother is gone, your father remarried inside a year, and today the new family moves in: his wife and the two sons you had never met. You only knew the name. Caruso. The kind of name that makes men in this city lower their voices and check their rearview mirrors.

Behind them a dark-haired woman steps out of the first car, elegant in a black dress, and your father goes to her at once and kisses her cheek.

he calls up to you, beaming.

Up close Stefano is taller than you thought, enormous, dark-complexioned, broad through the shoulders, veins standing on his forearms, a face that could freeze a man with one look. He didn't glance at the house when he got out; he read it the way you would read an exit. Griffin is only a little shorter, ash-blond, easy and unhurried, though his eyes give away nothing at all. He lets the smile widen a fraction.

Stefano jerks his head toward the house, already moving past you.