The silence in the Valente estate did not settle; it coiled. Dominic sat motionless beneath the brass-weighted reading lamp for an hour after the gold band of sunlight dissolved from the far wall.

The rain started at midnight, fine and slate-gray, turning the cobblestones of the Navy Yard into slick ribbons of oil and water.

In the back of a black unmarked Lincoln Town Car idling three blocks from the federal courthouse in Camden, Marco Falcone cleaned his spectacles with a corner of a gray silk pocket square. The interior smelled of peppermint and cold leather. In the passenger seat, his driver—a twenty-four-year-old kid named Frankie whose father had died in the dock wars—kept his eyes fixed on the illuminated dashboard clock.

"He didn't call the crews," Frankie said, his voice tight, the knuckles of his right hand white where they gripped the steering wheel. "I checked the wiretaps on the main gate. The trunk lines are dead silent. Not a car moved out of the estate all evening except the milk truck."

Marco didn't look up from his lenses. He held one circle of glass to the dashboard light, checking for smudges. "Dominic doesn't use the wire when he’s thinking, Francis. He sits in the dark and smells the carpet. He’s probably still standing by that window, wondering if he missed a line in the shipping manifests from three summers ago."

"If he finds the ledger—"

"He found it," Marco interrupted softly. His voice didn't carry a shred of edge; it was the tone of an accountant confirming that the quarterly deficit matched the forecast. "I left the mortar loose on purpose. A man like Dominic doesn't wait for doors to open. He kicks them in because he prefers the noise."

"Then why are we sitting here in the rain? If he knows—"

"Because the federal building on Cooper Street doesn't close for the weekend, Frankie. And because the girl with the crooked pigtails is already eating pancakes in a diner forty miles outside of Altoona with her mother." Marco folded his glasses and slid them neatly onto the bridge of his nose. "Dominic thinks he owns the city because he owns the dirt under it. He forgot that the people who carry the bags always know where the floorboards are rotten."

Frankie turned his head, his face pale in the green glow of the instrument panel. "What about the boss's brother? The one down in Atlantic City? If he hears about this—"

"Arthur Valente has been dead since the night we cleared the docks," Marco said calmly, his hand resting on the leather notebook in his lap. "He just doesn't know it yet. Give me the burner."

Frankie reached into the glove compartment and handed over a cheap prepaid plastic phone with a cracked screen.

Marco didn't dial a number. He pressed a single speed-dial key and held it to his ear. It rang twice before a dry, tired voice answered from an office forty floors above the city.

"Special Agent Miller."

"The ledger is in the wall, Paul," Marco said, his voice dropping an octave into something flat and unrecognizable. "And Dominic is sitting in the dark with the rabbit. You have twenty minutes before he realizes the back gate isn't locked."