and stopped. Nick sat where he was and contemplated his home in the Christmas dawn. It looked almost undisturbed except for a few tracks through the lawn where gurneys had rolled, and a bit of auto glass glinting on the street.
It wasn’t a crime scene; this was his town, and the police did as he told them. Of course he’d told Chief Halloran to stand down.
Such a quiet devastation last night had been. Not a firefight like the ambush at Dominic’s. Only three bullets fired, from more than half a mile away. The attack had been almost elegant. Two of those three bullets had hit their intended targets.
The third had been off by only a foot or so.
Nick had convinced his daughter to come home to him; he’d closed the distance between them from three thousand miles to only a foot or so.
Now the distance between them would be infinite. Forever.
“Nick?” Donnie asked, and Nick remembered he was in the car with three other men.
“Yes. Let’s go in.”
Mel took those words as his order and stepped out from behind the wheel at once. Donnie and Alex got out as well.
Mel stood beside Nick’s door, blocking it, until he was sure the area was clear, then opened the door. Nick stepped out into a bright, cold Christmas morning.
He’d thought this area secure last night, he remembered. It had been one of his last thoughts while Elisa lived. How had he been so wrong?
Over these past horrid hours, he’d leaned into that question, and he knew the answer, in terms both practical and existential. Practically speaking, it was simple and infuriatingly stupid on his part: the extensive protection plan for his home and family had been designed, at great length and in deep detail, when he married and moved into this house. When Elisa was born, they revised the plan to keep his children safe. When he became don, they revised the plan for extra coverage.
With the birth of each child, they reviewed the plan and adjusted as necessary. When the kids started school, and when Elisa and Lia left for college, they made new plans for them. When there was extra danger in his world, he added extra coverage on his children when they were away from him.
But they had not reconsidered the plan at the house since Ren was born.
Ren was fifteen years old.
When he was born, the lighthouse had had a full-time keeper. They had factored that site into the plan, and had cleared it, but no one—not even Nick himself—had considered that its shift to automation changed its status to a potential vulnerability.
He prided himself on his keen insight and attention to detail, but he’d missed that.
In fact, Nick had begun to question the keenness of his insight and attention. He was making mistakes lately he would never have made as a younger man, or as a man who hadn’t been shot and left in a coma.
Now those mistakes had gotten people he loved hurt. Killed.
Maybe the biggest mistake he’d made had been to take on Il Padrino and the ways of La Cosa Nostra.
After years of stable peace in his business and tranquility in his life, he and his men had fought in two wars within the past four years. The first had come to him, and he’d fought off vermin that wanted to invade. But this one—this one he’d sought out. To pursue his own ends. To make the heir he wanted.
His certainty in the justness of that cause hadn’t wavered. Trey was the heir he wanted, and he’d promised to go to the mattresses for him. But he would never have willingly sacrificed one of his children to that ambition.
Trey hadn’t sought it. He’d understood when he came to Nick’s side of the pews that he would be unable to rise in the organization, and he’d wanted it anyway. It was him, Nick, who’d decided he wanted Trey at his side. He’d begun to imagine a future after his time and had seen no Pagano to take his place. He’d seen the end of the legacy begun by his uncle and father, and he’d seen the honorable, intelligent man Trey had become, and he’d been seduced by the chance continue his name.
He’d been arrogant. And now his daughter was dead.
If only he had chosen Donnie to be his heir, Elisa would be alive. And Angie would, most likely, still be at his side. He’d turned Angie’s attention to Giada to support her coup to take