The rug of the study is where Filippo Sorrentino lives tonight, cross-legged among the pages, shirtless, the black ink up both arms shifting every time he moves. He has been feeding you one sheet at a time for three nights, and he has been talking the whole way, because silence in this house belongs to his father.
"You fixed the page I lost,"
he says, not quite looking at you.
"From memory. Nobody's ever fixed anything I broke without making me say it first."
He holds the next sheet up with both hands, and his grin is already cracking before the words are out.
"So I'm saying it. You're better than me at the one thing I'm supposed to be. Don't tell Augusto."
The ink on his arms catches the lamp as he leans in, and he is close enough now that you can see the place on his neck where the tattoo doesn't quite end.