The rain in the lower district did not fall; it drifted like smoke, slicking the asphalt and carrying the smell of coal smoke and rotting citrus from the wholesale market two blocks down.

By midnight, the apartment was quiet again.

The broken door had been temporarily braced with a length of four-by-four timber Dante had hauled up from the basement. Lily was asleep on the narrow cot in the corner, her breathing deep and even, one small hand still clutching the pink wool tassel of her cap.

Elena sat at the kitchen table with a cup of black coffee she hadn't touched. The steam had long since stopped rising from the rim.

Dante stood by the broken window, looking out over the wet slate roofs of the district toward the black silhouette of the harbor cranes against the sulfur-yellow glow of the city skyline.

"Who sent them?" Elena asked, her voice steady now, the old steel returning to her spine. "If your uncle is dead and the Commission is gone, who is left to care about us?"

"The old men are gone," Dante said without turning around. "But men like me leave successors. Young boys with clean hands and short memories who think the territory belongs to whoever can draw the fastest." He turned his head slightly, his profile sharp against the gray light of the streetlamp below. "They knew I was looking for you. Or rather, they knew I had started asking questions about the warehouse fires from five years ago. When my men started pulling the old files, someone got nervous."

"And you?" Elena looked up at him, the coffee cup trembling slightly between her fingers. "What are you going to do now that you've found us?"

Dante walked over to the table and pulled out the wooden chair opposite her. He sat down, his large frame making the rickety furniture creak in protest. For a long moment, he didn't speak. He simply looked at her—at the fine lines around her mouth, at the dark circles under her eyes, at the woman who had been his entire world before the world had tried to tear them both apart.

"I am going to finish what I started five years ago," he said quietly.

"Which is?"

"To kill every last bastard who ever wrote your name on a piece of paper."

Elena closed her eyes. She leaned back against the wall, her head resting against the peeling wallpaper. A bitter, ironic smile touched the corners of her mouth.

"You haven't changed at all, Dante. You still think violence is a ledger that can be balanced by adding more red ink."

"It's the only language they speak," he replied simply.

He reached across the table, his fingers brushing the back of her hand until they reached the silvery scar on her left wrist. He traced it with the pad of his thumb, his touch surprisingly gentle for a man who had spent the evening trading gunfire in a tenement hallway.

"And what about you?" he asked. "Do you want to stay here in this room with the rain leaking through the roof and the men in black coats knocking on your door every five years?"

Elena opened her eyes. She looked down at his thumb resting against her skin, then up at his face—at the gray eyes that had never quite learned how to forgive themselves.