Death Bliss
She has broken fifty years of omertà for a translator from Brooklyn, and she has done it without explanation, without justification, without anything except a cup of hot water and the touch of her hand on the back of Serafina's.
And Serafina has accepted it. She has taken the map and hidden it and kept writing, and now she is sitting here with my hand on the back of her chair and my breath on her neck and she is waiting to see what I will do.
The oath I swore at Lorenzo's grave pulls at me. I can feel it like a wire around my ribs, tightening every time I breathe. I swore to avenge him through the family's machinery. I swore to put the family above every personal attachment, every private de