Death Bliss
It is a map of how we got here, and the map leads forward, not back, and the forward path is lit by the match we have just struck.
The house holds its breath around us. The kitchen wing is setting the table for dinner, and the dinner hour is approaching, and the formal dining room is lit with candles and set with polished silver plates, and the household is moving through its rhythms, and none of them know that the heir to the Armenise syndicate has just chosen a translator over his blood oath, and the choice is irrevocable, and the consequences have not yet begun to arrive.
But they will. The candle in the chapel is out, and the ledger is waiting in the dark, and the fuse is lit.