The archives of the Commission do not record the names of women, only the weight of the debts they carry. In the dusty ledgers of the Sicilian underworld, the fall of the Vitiello stronghold was officially attributed to a "catastrophic gas leak" and a localized tremor. There was no mention of a Don who turned into a ghost, nor of a girl who vanished into the spray of the Mediterranean.

But the blood of a Moretti is a stubborn thing. It does not simply evaporate; it sinks into the earth and ...