The heat of Calabria was a fever dream we had left behind at the shoreline. By the time the small, unlisted prop plane crossed into Swiss airspace, the air inside the cabin was thin and biting, tasting of recycled oxygen and the metallic tang of old blood.

Rocco hadn't spoken since we cleared the Italian border. He sat across from me, cleaning a jagged cut on his forearm with a methodical, detached intensity. The icy blue of his eyes seemed to mirror the glaciers passing beneath us. He wasn't ...