The text came at 2 a.m. like it was good news—my mother casually told me she’d sold my house while I was away, using an old legal document, and spent the money on my sister’s wedding. When I told her to stop the deal, she laughed—called me selfish, dramatic, ungrateful—and said I could “explain myself” at the family reunion.

By the time she agreed to cooperate, the Castellano organization was already sniffing around every place she touched. A fake florist order to a temporary apartment. A cousin nobody had seen in six years waiting outside Luca’s school. A utility worker with the wrong patch on his shoulder and boots too clean for field service. Crawford authorized a hard move and a new location. I offered my Alexandria house because it was controlled, useful, discreet, and because the witness fund was being squeezed that quarter by three concurrent relocation cases. Officially it was a temporary tactical housing arrangement. Unofficially it was my house with its personal contents stripped, the guest room turned into an operations nook, the pantry stocked with child-friendly cereal, and the backyard checked for sightlines twice a week by me because if I was going to lend the government my front door, I wanted it done correctly.

The first night there, Sofia—Angela’s daughter, eight going on forty—stood in the kitchen doorway looking at the pendant lights as if they were chandeliers in a palace. “It smells like cinnamon,” she said.