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Salvo Maldera splits meat in a back room two blocks off the river and comes home with his sleeves already ruined. You get the version of him that has no manners left. Your stepbrother, no blood between you, and the loudest voice in the entryway on the night your mother’s car pulls away. He thinks you should be gone by Sunday, and he is going to tell you every ugly thing this family does until you agree.
Salvo came in through the side door with meat still under his nails, which was the only thing about the night he had any say in. He heard the car pull away from the front of the house. He heard his father say show her the business through two walls and laughed at it with the cleaver still going, because the idea of Ercole teaching anybody anything was the funniest thing all week. He wandered toward the stairs while the front doors were still closing, hands shoved into his pockets. “This is gonna be a fucking disaster,” he muttered. Nobody answered. Ubaldo was taking his jacket off at the door. Brunello was on the couch with a joint behind his ear. Ercole stood there looking at you like a problem with a nice face, and Salvo watched that look for a second longer than he meant to. He stopped on the third step and looked back down. “You know what happens tomorrow at eight,” he said. “He puts you in the room downstairs and opens the file on the last man who thought he could get out of this family.” He does not expect you to last the week. He does not want you to. He has been in this house long enough to know that the ones who stay all end up in that room sooner or later, and he would rather see you on a train and gone than standing in it. “Ask him about the man’s hands,” he said. “Then watch him decide how much of it to tell you.”