Notes appear in the first chapter.


Part Two

When she called, Stefano came himself and brought a truck and two of her father's men with him. Bianchi, who'd only bothered with packing a bag of clothes and a bag of mementoes, blinked at them in some astonishment. Uncle Stefano just peered at her two bags and laughed. "Still know how to travel light, don't you?"

"It's the only way to move fast," she retorted, and maintained her grip when one of the men Stefano had brought with him tried to relieve her of them.

"So it is, so it is. Still." Stefano clapped his hands together. "No sense in leaving it behind you if you don't have to. Change of plans, boys. You two stay here and pack the rest of it up and follow along when you can."

"But—" one of them started, giving Bianchi a look that clearly said, What about her?

"Don't you worry your pretty little head, Marco." Stefano's smile wreathed his face and showed all his teeth. "Ms. Bianchi and I can take care of ourselves."

Marco gave Bianchi another doubtful look, but bowed to Uncle Stefano's force of personality while she ground her teeth and resisted the urge to start off her homecoming by poisoning one of her father's men. "You don't have to bother with the furniture. It came with the apartment."

"See, boys? Life is better already, isn't it?" Stefano beamed at them. "Try not to take all day with it, then."

They left the two of them to it and descended the stairs to the street. Uncle Stefano had parked in an alley; Bianchi snorted at the black and yellow lines of the car. "Your car looks like a bee."

He regarded it fondly, patting its roof. "I know. Adorable, isn't it?"

"Has anyone ever told you that you have peculiar tastes?" Bianchi stowed her bags in the trunk herself while he stood back.

"My dear, when you've reached the age I have, you will realize that there's no point in not enjoying the things you like, and you'll let the world go hang, too." He did hold the door for her—front passenger side, at least, and not the back seat—and Bianchi slid in.

Bianchi rolled her eyes. "And being the Saint has nothing to do with it, of course."

He settled himself behind the wheel, smiling like a cat, sleek and self-satisfied. "There are some compensations to having a reputation. But you know that." He started up the engine and patted the wheel. "All buckled in?"

"Yes," she said, because she remembered how he drove.

"Good, good."

Bianchi didn't say anything while he maneuvered them out of town, letting him concentrate on driving while she focused on not cringing as he wove in and out of traffic, squeaking through openings that hadn't actually seemed possible before he'd tried for them. When they finally hit open road, she unclenched her fingers from the death grip she'd had on the door, mustered all her composure, and said, "What can you tell me about the Family's status, Uncle Stefano?"

He hummed between his teeth, something that sounded like approval. "I haven't told Luciano to expect you today. I thought you might like to have the advantage of surprising him."

It was a gift of sorts, one that he probably oughtn't to have offered, given his oaths to her father. Bianchi inclined her head. "I do. Thank you."

"Don't mention it." He watched the road ahead of them, smile falling away. "For the moment, we're stable. Business is going well enough, although people are starting to wonder a little about where the Falco are going now that young Hayato's gone in with the Vongola. Your mother hasn't been home in years, you realize."

So far, so good: nothing she hadn't already known. "Like I'm going to blame her." Costanza Falco had earned the right to drift from resort to resort for the rest of her life as far as Bianchi was concerned, though perhaps it would have been nice to have had more contact with her over the years.

Stefano just laughed, dry. "Save it for someone else, kiddo. You know I'm not going to cast aspersions." He tapped his fingers against the wheel. "We do have a girl coming out to the house a few times a week. You'll probably like her. She's got a good head on her shoulders."

"My father's mistress?" Bianchi raised her eyebrows. "Really? Be serious."

"Don't be silly. Luciano hasn't looked at another woman since Haruka." Stefano deftly guided the car around another and sent them hurtling around a curve in the road. "It just makes people happy to think he might have finally taken another mistress. Mostly they play chess and talk."

"Pity," Bianchi murmured. "It would be easier if he would have taken a mistress." Easier on the Family, easier on her... easier on everyone, really. God, he really needed to get with the program.

"You don't have to tell me that. Giancarlo and I have been telling him that for years now." Stefano sighed. "But there wasn't anything for it, you know. He never has gotten over Haruka. Love is cruel."

Bianchi stared out the window at the countryside blurring past them. "Yes, I suppose it is." She couldn't help how curt that was. "Now tell me more about the Family in general, please?"

"As you like." He was quiet for a moment. "As I said, things are currently stable, though people are worried about the lack of an heir. It will help that you're coming home."

There was a peculiar undercurrent in his voice. Bianchi looked away from the window, but his expression wasn't giving anything away. "You don't sound convinced."

"I suppose I don't." Stefano frowned at the road ahead of them. "You did not hear this from me."

"Of course I didn't."

"Good girl." Uncle Stefano sucked on his teeth and guided them around a slow-moving truck before he finally said, "You remember what happened to the Linardon, of course."

Who didn't remember that? "Fucking Macrini." It was one part reflex and one part because the way the fucking Macrini had taken the Linardon apart really had been that appalling.

"Just so." Stefano's fingers did a dance against the wheel, staccato and arrhythmic. "We took the twins in. They're good boys, both of them, but I would rather not give the Falco into their hands, just the same. They aren't ours."

Bianchi had to take a breath, and then another, staggered. "When you say the twins, you mean—"

"The Linardon twins, yes." His tone was carefully bland. "Though we don't call them that any more." He glanced at her, eyes sharp. "No one knows this."

"Shit." Bianchi settled lower in her seat, barely noticing the way the car hurtled around another with only bare centimeters to spare, assimilating this new information. The Linardon twins, still alive and well despite the destruction of their Family. "What do you mean, give the Falco to them?" Surely her father wouldn't—

"Luciano is fond of them, and they have served us well. I still don't believe that he should marry you to Davide just to have someone to follow after him. It's not right." Stefano was actually scowling at the road now, but then, he was a Falco man born and bred, kin from a few generations back. He wouldn't think it right.

Bianchi let her head fall back against the headrest, closed her eyes, and ran through all the curse words she knew. Uncle Stefano let her, and only murmured a correction for her pronunciation when she started in on the Russian. Finally, she opened her eyes again and glanced at him. "Has he lost his damn mind?"

"Not exactly." His jaw was set. "But he wants a son badly."

"He has a son. He just fucked it up."

"You're not going to get me to argue with you there." Uncle Stefano shook his head. "He never was good at listening to advice on that front."

"No kidding." Bianchi pinched the bridge of her nose. "Shit." This changed things even more than finding out that the old goat was dying had. Her prospective fiancé wasn't even really a Falco man. This was going to take even more straightening out than she'd feared. "Okay. Tell me about Davide."

"He's not a bad kid," Stefano began. Bianchi wasn't sure whether that was a good sign or a bad one. "Like I said, he does well by the Falco. He's sharp—well, both of them are, really. They make good underbosses for us, and they're good men, but I just..." His voice trailed off and he sighed. "It's not right." He shook his head. "And your father should know better than to have settled on young Davide when we all know he's besotted with his Alessia."

"Oh, for fuck's sweet sake." Bianchi groaned and rubbed her forehead. "Just how well does he think that will work?"

"Better than it will with Gervasio." Stefano's mouth quirked. "That one doesn't know how to appreciate a pretty lady."

Great. One was gay and the other was already in love. And neither of them were really Falco men. Yeah, nothing but happiness there. Shit.

"It's good that you're coming home."

"It's not like you left me much choice." Bianchi grimaced, but some of the bitterness had gone out of it. He hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said that the Falco needed her.

"It's still good," he insisted. "Things will go better now."

"You're superstitious, Uncle Stefano." But there was something there... something she could use, maybe, to get out of this whole mess and get things back on track, if she had the balls for it. Bianchi chewed on her lip, thinking fast.

"You're too young to be so cynical," he retorted.

It could work. As a delaying tactic, if nothing else. "If you're not cynical, you're not paying attention." When he just rolled his eyes, Bianchi changed the subject. "What else should I know?"

After all, one couldn't make good plans without good data.

They passed the remainder of the drive that way; Uncle Stefano gave her concise descriptions of the Falco's internal factions and their constituents and how they were balanced against each other—carefully, from the sounds of it, so much so that it gave Bianchi a headache to think about. It sounded worse than the Tomasso job, where a misstep would have blown her cover and gotten her killed.

Saying as much to Stefano just earned her a wolfish grin. "Don't be silly, kiddo. This is where it gets fun."

He had bad hobbies, but he only laughed when she told him so.

They pulled into the long drive that led to the main house much sooner than Bianchi was ready for, but he didn't pull in at the front door. He guided the car around back instead and parked in the garage. When she looked at him, eyebrows raised, he chuckled. "Family doesn't have to go through the front door."

"That's what you think." Bianchi took a deep breath as he cut the engine. "Well. Let's get this show on the road."

He got the door and the trunk for her, but let her sling the duffel over her shoulder and carry the other bag herself. Bianchi appreciated the gesture, even though the weight of the bags dragged at her shoulders, and let him lead her inside, up through the back ways of the house—the domain of the staff and the men and women who served the Falco. No one spared Bianchi more than a passing glance, though Uncle Stefano earned a few smirks and raised eyebrows, which he ignored.

It seemed a bit lax to Bianchi, purely on professional grounds, though it wasn't any of her business—except, she reminded herself, it was now.

She set that thought aside to deal with later, when she had the time to come to terms with it, and came to a stop at Stefano's heels outside her father's office. When Stefano knocked, the sound of her father's voice was irritated. "What?"

Uncle Stefano didn't seem to be deterred by that; he pushed the door open and sauntered in. "Special delivery for you, Boss."

Bianchi held her chin a little higher and straightened her spine a little more as she stepped inside the room.

It still smelled of tobacco and smoke and the deep leather of the chairs and the dusty smell of paper in the sunshine.

"Stefano, now is not the time—" her father began, before he looked up, and stopped when he saw Bianchi.

She met his stare as evenly as she could, holding herself tall and reminding herself that she was an adult and she had chosen this, damn it, and would not change her mind now. That wasn't easy, not when just standing in his office made her feel like she was eight years old all over again, so Bianchi focused on examining her father's face instead. She hadn't noticed how much older he looked at Tsuna's reception. He looked tired, with more grey in his hair, and there was surprise on his face, mixed with a measure of relief. She couldn't see any pleasure there, but perhaps relief was enough to be going on for now.

"What's this?" he said, after a moment of mutual scrutiny.

"I'm back." The bags she was carrying ought to have been a sign of that, but perhaps they had to begin the conversation somewhere. "The Falco need me, so here I am."

Surprise moved over her father's face again. "Really," he drawled. "I thought you said you'd rather die than ever come home again."

"You never told me that the fucking Macrini were at the door."

Her father's eyes cut away from hers; Uncle Stefano coughed. "It's true, Boss." He almost managed to sound apologetic. "You catch more flies with honey."

Bianchi waited till her father was looking at her again. "Yeah, it's kind of funny how well I respond to being reasoned with instead of being ordered around." That one struck home, at least if the faint flicker of his expression was any measure. "But I suppose that never occurred to you."

"Most people do respond to direct orders from the heads of their Families."

Bianchi dropped her bags inside the door and closed it, using the moment when her face was turned away from his to gather up her self-control and hold it firmly. "Yes, but I'm not most people." She came away from the door and took one of the chairs that stood in front of her father's broad desk.

If she tried hard enough, she could almost think that this was the opening gambit of a job—the part where she and a prospective employer sized each other up and negotiated their terms. "I've been living without a Family for almost ten years, if you'll recall."

Her father's frown etched itself around his mouth and eyes. "And I suppose that's all my fault?"

"Some of it." Bianchi shrugged. "I chose to leave, and you were the one who said I couldn't call myself a Falco if I did." Her palms were damp, but she forced her voice to stay calm. "And no one leaves home to turn freelance hitman when the conditions at home are tolerable."

That one hit home, too, judging by the way his expression turned darker. "You don't know—"

Stefano coughed again, quietly. "Boss."

There were all kinds of layers there. Bianchi didn't know what they were, but it was enough to make her father inhale through his nose and fold his lips together tightly, and not finish the statement he'd begun. "That's long since over with," he said after a moment in which he was clearly struggling with something. Himself, perhaps.

Bianchi chose not to dispute that. "Yes, I suppose it is." She lifted her chin a little. Time to see how well she could bluff. "So, anyway. I'm here. You'd better start planning the inheritance ceremony. The sooner we get that out of the way, the better."

Both of her father's eyebrows went up, while Uncle Stefano made a choked sound that Bianchi suspected of being a stifled laugh. "Inheritance ceremony?"

"Yes." Bianchi kept her voice as crisp and professional as she knew how to make it. "I'm going to be your heir, since you seem to have run out of other candidates. We should make that official, the sooner the better."

Uncle Stefano was grinning outright and her father was simply staring. "What in God's name makes you think that?"

"The fact that I'm not going to let you move me around like a pawn on a chess board." Bianchi laced her fingers together and set them on her knee to hide out they wanted to shake. "Maybe I should have been a son, but I'm not. That doesn't mean I'm any less capable than a son might have been. And I will not stand by and let you give the Falco over to the hands of another Family."

Her father stared at her for a long moment before he turned to look at Stefano, who merely shrugged and spread his hands. "She needed to know."

"That wasn't your secret to share." Her father seemed to be speaking from between clenched teeth. "What else did you tell her?"

Uncle Stefano's smile vanished. "Everything." He held up a hand when her father made a strangled sound. "Someone had to do it, and God knows you weren't going to. It's for the sake of the Family, Boss."

For the sake of the Family. It was amazing how magical those words could be, Bianchi mused. They'd brought her back to this place when she'd sworn nothing else could and now they made her father growl and rub his forehead and leave off yelling at Stefano. "You always have presumed too much."

"Just doing my job, Boss. Someone's got to look out for you." Stefano went back to lounging against the sideboard, hands in his pockets, looking genial and harmless.

Her father scrubbed his hands over his face. Several seconds ticked past before he brought himself to look at Bianchi again. When he did, his entire expression was wary. "So you know."

"I do." Bianchi met his gaze squarely. "So does Hayato, but he's given his word not to share it among the Vongola until it becomes common knowledge."

"That's... something, I suppose." His expression was grim. "Let us hope that he can keep that promise."

The very fact that he could question such a thing suggested that he never had understood Hayato very well. Bianchi kept that thought to herself. "He will."

"He'd better." Her father shook his head. "You think you can become my heir, just like that? You don't know anything about this Family, even if you weren't—" He gestured, silently, as if to encompass her essential femininity that way.

"I know enough." Bianchi shrugged. "I've spent the past several years training the Vongola Tenth. I know more than you think I do. And I'll learn the rest."

He snorted. "You can't know enough for this job. No one can."

"All the more reason for it." Stefano shrugged when they both glanced at him. "Well, it's true. Fewer preconceptions going in and all."

So he was on her side. That was an unexpected encouragement. "Precisely," Bianchi said. "And if nothing else, I'm Falco and the only legitimate heir you have. Naming me your successor is better than trying to marry me off and naming that poor schmuck to the job."

Her father rolled his eyes. "And our true motivations emerge."

Bianchi could feel her back stiffen. "Excuse me?"

Her father's smile lacked the good humor that would have warmed it. "The whole countryside knows how you've been carrying on with the Cavallone boy."

"It wasn't supposed to be a secret," she retorted. She drew a breath to steady herself. "Anyway. That's over with now."

"It had better be. You should have had more sense than to begin it in the first place."

"Oh, like you're known for your great common sense in your affairs." Bianchi looked away from him, at the portrait that hung over the mantel. It should have been of her mother. It wasn't.

"That was different." He said it stiffly, enunciating each word clearly.

"Yeah, you were already married. At least—" she nearly said Dino, but that would have surrendered too much information "—Cavallone and I aren't married to other people."

"Yet."

"If you like." Bianchi forced herself to shrug. "It doesn't matter. Like I said, it's over. And I fail to see how that has any bearing on my not wanting to be traded off like a piece of land, just to settle a deal. We're not in the middle ages any more. I can lead the Falco myself and marry where I like."

Her father looked at her for a moment and turned to Stefano. "Were we ever so young?"

Stefano laughed. "Younger, even." He grinned. "It's no bad thing to be young, if you ask me."

"That's because you never did grow up." Her father's gaze returned to her. "I don't have time for this argument right now," he said, finally. "Go see Alfonso and have him get you settled. And do something about your clothes, you can't go around dressed like that if you don't want to scandalize the whole household. We'll talk more at dinner."

Bianchi contemplated being stubborn for two beats and decided it wasn't worth it. "Been a while since my last job."

He took her meaning and rolled his eyes, as if he couldn't believe she'd bring up something so trivial. "You're a Falco. You can draw a line of credit anywhere in town."

"Yeah, okay." And maybe, if he was lucky, she wouldn't take her irritation out on his bank account. Maybe. Bianchi stood. "I'll see you at dinner."

She had reached the door and shouldered her bags before he spoke again—just her name. When she looked back at him, eyebrows raised, he said, "Thank you. For coming home." He said it stiffly, but Bianchi thought he might have actually meant it.

She shrugged at him. "It was for the Family," she told him and went out.


Alfonso she remembered from her childhood; he was the house's majordomo and ruled the world of the staff with an iron hand. He was a small, fussy man and had his own office not too far from the kitchen where his wife Annette marshaled her own army of cooks against the task of keeping the house fed. Bianchi made her way to Alfonso's office and looked in on him before tapping on the door frame; he seemed to be doing accounts and answered her tap without looking up. "Yes, what is it?"

That briskness was familiar, too; he'd never seemed to have enough hours in the day to get all his work done and was perpetually harried. She cleared her throat. "My father sent me to you. I need a room to stay in."

Bianchi saw his pen stop moving on the paper as he looked up slowly. Then the pen dropped out of his fingers. "Miss Bianchi?" He said it like he couldn't quite believe he was seeing her.

Bianchi found a smile for him that she suspected was a little crooked. "Yeah. I guess I'm back."

She remembered Alfonso as always seeming too busy to smile, but now one split his face and lit his eyes. "You are? This is wonderful!" He sprang out of his chair and came around his desk, positively beaming. "Look at you, all grown up. You're beautiful, just like your mother." He took her hand and gazed at her. "And you're home now?"

"Yeah, I am." The joy seemed a little much to her, but she supposed that Alfonso always had been fond enough of her and Hayato in his own impatient way. "So I'll be needing a room, I suppose."

"A room? No, rooms, surely." He was still beaming at her, patting her hand. "For the boss's daughter, certainly rooms." He seemed to realize, then, that she was holding a pair of bags. "Good Lord, you shouldn't have to be hauling those heavy things around!"

Bianchi tried to protest that she was fine, but he was already calling for someone, one of the staff, and she found herself relieved of the burden before she could protest. Meanwhile Alfonso bustled through his office, unearthing the massive ring of keys that was one of his charges. "Now, do you know which set of rooms you might like?" He picked through the keys busily. "We've kept your old room as you left it—"

Bianchi recalled having gone through an extended phase of pink-and-gilt appreciation. "No, I don't think so." There had been ruffles, too. Extensive ruffles.

"Of course not," Alfonso said, without missing a beat. "You'll want something more appropriate to your age and status."

"I don't really need anything fancy," Bianchi said, rather doubting that it would even register with him. There was really only one bedroom she wanted and it was out of reach now. Still. "Perhaps something that takes the morning sun?"

Alfonso brightened. "The morning sun—yes, I know just the rooms." He found a key. "If you'll come with me, Miss Bianchi?"

"Of course." She let him guide her upstairs while the boy with her bags followed after, staggering a little under the double burden of them. Alfonso talked the whole way, though she could barely follow the things he said about the house and the things that had changed and the others that had remained the same. Most of it seemed unchanged to her eyes: the furniture still looked the same, old and expensive, and the portraits gazed down from the walls indifferently. But Alfonso didn't seem to notice that she wasn't quite attending, or mind, anyway.

Bianchi brought her wandering attention to heel again when they came to the private wing. That had been Hayato's room, and that one had been hers. Both doors were closed, as was the door just a bit further down the corridor. That one had been her mother's, and had been occupied less and less frequently, the older Bianchi had gotten.

And where was Costanza Falco now? The last Bianchi had heard, she'd been in Spain.

Her father's rooms, the boss's rooms, were opposite her mother's. Bianchi could count the number of times she'd been inside them on the fingers of one hand.

Alfonso led them a bit further beyond that and turned down a corridor to the left, bringing them to rooms that hadn't been occupied more than a few times in Bianchi's memory, relics of a time when the Falco's ruling family had been larger. He stopped in front of one and stooped to unlock it. "The emerald suite," he said, and stepped aside to let Bianchi in.

Emerald was accurate enough—the room was done in a deep green the color of grass in the spring, from the velvet of the curtains that could be looped back with gold cords to the carpets spread over honey-blond wood. The walls were creamy pale over the wainscoting. When Alfonso stepped in to whisk the dustcover off a chair, Bianchi saw that the upholstery was the same deep green as the curtains, rich against the golden grain of the wood.

Bianchi moved through the rooms; Alfonso followed her at a discreet distance, quietly. That was just as well; she could see the room's fixtures without his aid. There was the front room with its couch and two chairs circled around a low table; there was another, smaller, room beyond that with a table and chairs and windows that poured in the light when Alfonso opened the drapes. The bedroom opened off that; it was dominated by a bed with more of the emerald velvet shrouding its posts. It had a pair of French doors opening onto a small balcony just large enough for a small wrought-iron table and two matching chairs, and perhaps a few pots of flowers.

There was a bathroom attached to the bedroom; the white tile of it gleamed in comparison to the green of the other rooms. It had an old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub that Bianchi suspected could hold enough water to come to her chin. There was a closet, too, large enough to walk into, and a small boudoir.

The apartment she'd just left could have fit into the suite three times over.

When Bianchi finally emerge from the boudoir, Alfonso had opened all the curtains and the late morning sunlight filled the room. He stood back, hands pressed together, and looked at her, clearly anxious for her response.

Bianchi looked around her; it was a far cry from the white and pale blues of Dino's rooms and the furniture was heavy and old-fashioned. But that all hardly mattered now. "Yes," she said. "This will do nicely."

Alfonso beamed. "I thought so!" He clapped his hands together. "Let me have the girls up to give it a good going over, and then we'll get you unpacked and settled in—"

Good Lord, and he surely meant every word of that. "I'd prefer to unpack my own belongings." She said it quickly, thinking of the personal items buried at the bottom of the duffel. "Please, if you don't mind—I would prefer to arrange things to my own taste."

"Yes, of course, of course." He didn't even bat an eye. "But let me call the girls, and in the meantime we can offer you lunch, and perhaps a tour around the building—or perhaps you would like to sort through the belongings in your old room...?"

It felt peculiar to be catered too so assiduously, as if he were anxious that she should not want for anything. "Actually," Bianchi said. "I thought I might drive into town. I need to update my wardrobe."

Alfonse beamed at her. "I'll order a car for you at once."

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she'd meant to drive herself, actually, but Bianchi checked herself. There wouldn't be any of that now, not if she was going to be the boss's daughter again. Especially not if she was going to claim the job of boss's heir. She suppressed the urge to sigh. "That would be splendid. Thank you."


Bianchi didn't know the man who sat behind the wheel of the black sedan with tinted windows that pulled up to the front of the house, nor the man who sat in the front seat next to him, but both of them were large and had the tell-tale lump under their jackets that betrayed the shoulder holsters. She kept her sigh purely internal, because there was no point in protesting having a security detail, either. "And you gentlemen are...?" she inquired after settling into her seat in the back and fastening her belt.

She ignored the glance that they exchanged. The driver spoke first. "I'm Mario. This is Carlo." Carlo muttered something as he was introduced.

"Lovely. I'm Bianchi Falco." There was no time like present to retrain herself into using that name again, though it sat uneasily on her tongue. "A pleasure to meet you both."

They exchanged glances again, this time slightly startled. "You too, Miss Falco," Mario said, and put the car in gear as Carlo rumbled something that was probably an agreement.

So much for conversation, Bianchi supposed, and settled back in her seat to let the drive past in silence. At least it was only a few minutes into town—which hadn't changed much, as far as Bianchi could tell. She and Hayato had come to town sometimes when they'd been very small, before things had gone to shit between them. She remembered that there'd been a bevy of nannies and bodyguards to watch over them as they'd explored the town square on market days, cadging sweets from indulgent shopkeepers and playing in the fountain at the center of the town square.

Those had been the good days. At least there had been good days.

Most of the shops looked the same, from what she remembered, which was what she'd been counting on. "This will do," she said as Mario circle the square and came to the west side of it. He murmured an acknowledgement and the car glided to a stop. Bianchi remembered to let Carlo exit the car first at the last minute. "We'll be in the dress shop," she told Mario as Carlo glanced around and opened her door.

The sign over the door was so old and faded that it was nearly illegible, but then, no one needed it to know what it said: Bastiani – Dresses Made. The original Bastiani had opened shop in that storefront before the turn of the last century and his family had followed the traditions he'd set down ever since.

The bell over the door still jingled half a tone off key, and the smell of the shop—old dust and sunlight on wooden boards, wool and silk and cotton, the smell of tea and the astringent odor of cedar—cast Bianchi back to the hours she'd spent here as a child, being fitted for dresses or playing quietly among the bolts of cloth while her mother negotiated with the then-current generation of the Bastiani dressmakers.

Bianchi revised the thought—the woman herself emerged from the back of the shop, summoned by the bell, still as stout as Bianchi remembered, though a little older and greyer. "Welcome to—oh, my." She stopped short at the sight of Bianchi, hand flying to her mouth. "Costanza—ah, no, it couldn't be. Bianchi, child, is that you?"

Bianchi started at her mother's name, and again at the way Rosa Bastiani rushed forward and embraced her while Carlo shifted his weight uneasily. "I—yes, it's me," she managed, awkwardly, shocked by the welcome. "I hadn't thought you'd recognize me."

"Not recognize you? My dear, don't be absurd, you are the very image of your mother." Rosa stepped back from her, holding her by the shoulders. "I swear I thought it was her for a moment, come back from the past or the fountain of youth."

"Ah," Bianchi said, thrown. "No, I'm afraid it's only me."

"There's no 'only' about it!" Rosa released her shoulders, smiling. "Good Lord, child, if only you knew how I've wondered and worried about you these ten years...! Well!" She shook her head. "There's not telling the young, I suppose."

And there was no answering that. Bianchi cleared her throat. "Well. Here I am, anyway. I suppose you don't have time for a fitting this afternoon?"

"Not have time for Costanza's daughter?" Rosa nearly sputtered with her indignation. "The very idea! Come in, child, and I'll put on a pot of tea, and we'll have a good long talk about fittings and other things." She glanced over Bianchi's shoulder. "And your man here can sit out back, if he likes, or go have a beer down at Ramiro's."

Bianchi suspected there wasn't much hope of that. "Go ahead, Carlo. I can look after myself for a bit."

She was right: he rumbled something that she thought meant that he wasn't going anywhere. Fortunately, Rosa had experience in shepherding bodyguards out of the way; she flapped her hands at him. "Go, the stoop if you won't have it any other way, but I won't have you looming over us while we discuss things men mustn't know."

It was rather like watching a guinea hen cluck at a bear, but Carlo let himself be shifted eventually, grudgingly, to the back of the shop, just in time for Mario to join him. Rosa supplied them with a brace of bottled sodas and shut the door on them, firmly, as one did a bothersome cat. "There," she sighed, and ushered Bianchi into her consulting room as she called to someone named Teo to put on the kettle for tea. She pressed Bianchi into one of the spindly chairs at the table and sank into the other with a sigh, and beamed at Bianchi some more. "I swear you look just like Costanza," she said. "It makes me feel thirty years younger, just looking at you."

"I—thank you," Bianchi said, to cover her confusion. "I—don't believe anyone has ever told me that, actually."

"How would they know to? You haven't been home in a long time." Rosa's smile faded a bit. "Neither has she, of course. How is she? I never hear from her any more."

Bianchi chose her words carefully. "I—the last I heard from her, she was well." It was true, though it left out the fact that she had not heard from her mother since leaving home. "Happier, too, I think."

Rosa's mouth hardened just a bit. "No one could deserve it more." Then she drew a breath and gave Bianchi a bright smile. "You've been away so long, and we haven't heard anything from you. What have you been doing with yourself?"

"Oh," Bianchi said, "a little of this and a little of that. I was in Japan for a while."

Rosa's eyes went gratifyingly wide. "Japan? My goodness, what on earth were you doing there?"

Bianchi laughed in spite of herself. "Home tutoring."

Rosa raised her eyebrows, but let that pass. "Were you there for very long?"

For the amount of time it had taken Tsuna to get through middle school and muddle his way through high school. "Several years, yeah."

"That's a long time to be away from home," Rosa observed.

Bianchi shrugged at her. "It wasn't that bad. There were interesting people there. I made friends. And there was plenty to keep me busy." Keeping Tsuna and his little Family out of trouble was a full-time job, just about.

Rosa nodded wisely. "That's good."

They were interrupted then by a teenager who balanced a tray carefully in knobby-knuckled hands. "Your tea, Mama." He was tall and rail-thin and peered at Bianchi from behind round lenses after setting the tray down.

"Thank you, Teo." Rosa smiled up at him. "This is my youngest. I doubt you'll remember him—he was just a baby when you left—but he'll be the one who'll be measuring you for new dresses after I've gone on. Teo, honey, this is Miss Bianchi Falco."

Bianchi did remember a toddler still in diapers, but there wasn't much resemblance between the toddler and the stooping teen staring at her now. "A pleasure to meet you again, Teo."

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "And you, Miss Falco."

"Teo, how are things coming along with the Ricci order?"

The question snapped him out of his shyness and he turned to his mother. "We've just finished the shell. I was going to give him a call about coming in for the fitting."

"I think that can wait for a bit." Rosa busied herself with pouring the tea—Bianchi remembered those fragile cups and how she'd longed to be allowed to take tea in them as her mother had done, and the first time she'd been allowed to. She accepted her cup and inhaled the steam rising from it as Rosa directed her son to pull up the stool from its place in the corner. "Teo began his apprenticeship this year," she murmured as her son perched on the stool and tucked his long legs up on the rails. "He should have some of the care of your clothing from the beginning."

"Yes, of course, that makes perfect sense." Bianchi sipped the tea—it was delicate, jasmine-scented and subtle on the tongue—and let Rosa hand her a plate of tea cakes. Teo was digging a notebook and a pencil out of his pocket and flipping them open; he looked rather like a clerically-minded stork. "Well, to business." She took another sip of tea. "Most of my clothes are the practical kind, good for working in, as you can see." Jeans and t-shirts were cheap enough to get rid of without much guilt when they ended up ruined. "They're comfortable enough, but I'll be doing a different kind of work now that I've come home."

Rosa nodded wisely. "Following your mother?"

Bianchi set her teacup down. "No. My father."

Rosa possessed remarkable self-control; her expression barely flickered, though her son made a startled sound. "Ah, of course. It will be suits, then, and not party dresses." If she thought it a pity, she didn't let on.

Bianchi thought about that. "Maybe." She glanced down at herself, considering her figure—it really was very nice, if she did say so herself—and her father's probable reaction to either suits or dresses. When she looked up again, both Rosa and Teo were waiting. "I'm not a man. And I don't care to pretend that I am."

Rosa hummed over the edge of her teacup. "Mm, I see. Fitted suits, perhaps, and tailored shirts... or dresses?"

Dresses weren't practical for running in, but then, freedom of movement didn't matter much when one was pinned down by one's security detail. Well, with any luck it would be a temporary matter. "Dresses, I think." A thought occurred to her and she grinned. "After all, men have such a hard time concentrating when they're ogling you."

Rosa laughed and Teo made another muffled sound, something between a laugh and a squawk. "This is very true. Teo, go pull the books for us, dear."

He hopped down and disappeared into the back, and came back with his arms full of binders. Rosa sorted through them and handed one over to Bianchi; it was full of clippings, sketches, and pictures. "Now," Rosa said, brisk, "let's see what we can find that will suit you."


Bianchi knew, now, that some bosses took their meals privately or with family in smaller, less formal dining rooms, and saved the large, formal dining halls for special occasions or guests. Growing up, it had seemed normal to take her meals at the long table in the formal dining room, sitting stiffly in her chair, answering Luciano Falco's peremptory questions if he had them or eating in silence while he and Costanza argued. It had been a long time before Bianchi had learned to enjoy a meal and not to associate it with tension in her shoulders and spine.

This meal didn't promise to be any better than the ones she remembered; there were two places laid at the table, one at the head and one at the foot, and a good four meters of empty table between them.

"This is absurd," Bianchi announced to no one in particular, and began dragging the chair away from the foot of the table.

That earned her some peculiar glances from the people going in and out, waiting for her father to come in so they could serve the meal. Bianchi ignored them and wrestled the chair down to the head of the table, placing it to the right of her father's seat. "There," she said, straightening her shirt absently, and went to retrieve her place setting.

Her father came in as she was rearranging the last heavy piece of silverware. When she looked up, he was staring. "What is this?"

Bianchi straightened up and stretched her back. "I didn't come home to play hostess in Mother's place, and I'm not shouting from the end of the table just to have a little conversation. It's ridiculous."

"You are the most impertinent creature who ever lived," he informed her, coming away from the door. But he did not tell her or the servants to restore the dishes to their proper places, either.

Bianchi rolled her eyes and let one of the footmen pull the chair out for her. "You think I'm bad? I've met worse than me." Haru came to mind, for one.

"God help those who have to deal with them," her father said, taking his seat.

Bianchi contemplated the fact that she was reasonably sure Haru had set her sights on Hayato and just smiled. "I'm sure it keeps life interesting."

"An interesting life is overrated." The staff filled their water glasses and poured the wine while others brought the first course in. "When you get to be my age, girl, you'll think the same."

Bianchi tasted her soup before trusting herself to answer. "Oh, I know that 'interesting' just means busy and too damn dangerous most of the time." She shrugged. "But that can be exciting, in its own way."

"You sound like Stefano." He wasn't really eating, she noticed; he just stirred his spoon through the soup and occasionally lifted it to his mouth.

"Uncle Stefano did teach me everything I know." Bianchi stopped, reconsidering. "Well. Everything that I didn't learn from Reborn, anyway." And Uncle Stefano had been the one who'd sent her to Reborn when she'd made up her mind to leave, so it all amounted to about the same thing in the end.

Her father frowned. "There are some things women shouldn't know."

Bianchi forced herself to take a mouthful of soup, and another, and then a sip of wine, before allowing herself to answer. "My goodness, how charmingly medieval of you to say so!" She smiled, trusting him to see that it was fake. "Shall we skip the bits where I scream at you that it's the twenty-first century and I'll do what I want with my life, and you shout about what's appropriate for a young lady of my station, and go straight to the part where we glare at each other and one of us storms out? I'd oblige you with the extended version, but it's been a long day and I'm not really in the mood for screaming."

To her complete surprise, he blinked at her, mouth twitching at the corners before it finally turned up in a faint smile. "Impertinent brat."

It should have been an insult—the form of it was right—but it wasn't. Bianchi paused, taken aback by the note of honest amusement in his voice, before recovering. "You already called me impertinent. You only get half points for brat."

"I wasn't aware that we were keeping score." He put his spoon down and pushed the bowl away; it didn't look as though the level of the soup had dropped very much.

Bianchi glanced away from that and shrugged. "I thought we always kept score." She certainly had, keeping a tally of how many times he'd smiled at Hayato and how many times he'd smiled at her, counting up the numbers and despairing at the difference between them.

"Perhaps." He watched her as she ate, silent; there was no telling what he was watching her for. He didn't say anything else until she'd finished her soup. "Keeping score is a cynical way to live."

"We're a cynical kind of people." Bianchi sipped her wine as the servants cleared their dishes away. "Most of us are. I guess I know a few who aren't." There was Tsuna, after all, who was teaching Hayato to trust again, and the other members of Tsuna's Family. And there was Dino, too. In his own way.

But she wasn't going to think about Dino.

Her father leaned back in his chair and sighed. "Maybe." Whatever he was looking at didn't seem to be present. "I don't think it's a good way to live."

Bianchi selected a piece of bread from the basket and buttered it, and swallowed the first several responses that occurred to her with a bite of it. "Maybe not. But it's what we've got for now. And I think it's due to change."

His eyes focused on the present again. "You have your faith in the Vongola heir too, I see." His tone was dry, though not entirely derisive.

Bianchi waited while the servants came in with the main course—a pair of steaks, it turned out, and carefully steamed vegetables under some kind of silky sauce—before she answered. "I was there to see him trained, you know. I know what he's capable of, and I've seen him fight. He's a good kid. He's going to be a great man." She took a breath and steadied herself. "So, yes. I suppose I have put my faith in him."

In the mood for it or not, she would have launched a screaming match with him after all if he'd so much as scoffed at her for being naïve, or worse—sentimental. But he seemed to have been listening; when she finished, all he did was incline his head. "I see. Now eat your dinner, it would be a shame to let it get cold."

"I suppose so." Bianchi picked up her fork and tried the steak; it was really quite good. She ate quietly and watched her father toy with his own meal. She didn't recall him being such a picky eater.

Eventually he put his utensils down and folded his hands under his chin. "So what did you go into town for?"

"To spend your money, of course." Rosa and Teo had helped her make a proper afternoon of it, too. "You did tell me to see about some new clothes."

Bianchi thought that his first impulse had been to wince, but it only showed around his eyes. "How efficient of you."

Bianchi gave him her sweetest smile. "I thought I was supposed to obey orders from my boss?"

He just snorted. "Please. You obey the ones you like and ignore the ones you don't."

"That's not entirely true." Bianchi sipped her wine. "I obey the ones that make sense."

He lifted an eyebrow. "And you're sure, of course, that you know everything you need to in order to tell which ones don't?"

"You learn fast when it means keeping yourself alive." Bianchi permitted herself a grim smile. "I won't say I know everything, but I have pretty good instincts. And better reflexes."

He made an amused sound. "Keeping yourself alive. Of course."

"Hitman, remember?" She gave him a pointed look. "I made my first kill when I was thirteen. And I only barely survived it." She still remembered how the fingers around her throat had felt, squeezing tight, and the way her vision had sparked and grayed out before she'd finally managed to shove some poison cooking into her target's mouth, and how she'd had to gasp for breath under the weight of his body before she'd managed to summon the strength to get free. "Anyway. Learned how to keep myself alive after that." Bianchi took a drink of her water to wash the taste out of her mouth and raised her eyebrows at his stare. "What, you think they call me the Poison Scorpion just because I have a smart mouth and an interesting tattoo?"

He didn't answer immediately, and let her see that he was choosing his words carefully. "That's very young."

Bianchi considered the food that was left on her plate and decided that she was done. "Hayato got started even earlier than I did."

He just looked away at the mention of Hayato; the conversation fell silent as the staff cleared the plates away and brought in two small dishes of ice cream. As Bianchi dipped her spoon into the ice cream, her father said, "I thought for sure that we'd be screaming at each other by this point."

"Told you I'm not really in the mood for it."

"Still. The last time we spoke didn't got this well."

She had to assume he didn't mean this morning's conversation, and gave him her most exasperated look. "Of course it didn't. You tried to order me to heel like a dog." Maybe that was the problem; her father was clearly a dog person. Maybe if he'd been a cat person, they would have gotten along better. "I wouldn't have started screaming at you if I hadn't been so damn offended. I wouldn't have said yes either, mind you." She looked away from him. "I never did plan on coming back here."

Just how much wine had she downed, anyway? She was going to have to pay closer attention to that, Jesus.

"Was it really that bad?" The question was uncertain and his voice was wistful; when Bianchi looked around, she saw that the staff had gone and the doors were closed, which explained that.

"How am I supposed to answer that?" She pushed her ice cream away, thought about the last of her wine, and took up the water glass instead.

"However you like, I suppose."

Jesus.

Bianchi took a long drink of her water and then wiped her damp fingers on her napkin. "It was bad," she said, finally. "You didn't—it was easy to see how much you favored Hayato, and how unimportant I was. And Mother was too desperate to have another baby, to have an actual son, to pay much attention to me." And she'd always gotten the sense that the only thing her mother had seen when she'd looked at her was her own failure. "You said I sound like Uncle Stefano. Well, I should. He practically raised me himself. I used to wish he really was my father. That somehow Hayato and I could switch places, so he could be the legitimate one and I could—well, so we would be in the more sensible arrangement. I was sort of happy when he ran away, you know. Thought that maybe you'd be a little more interested in me after that, but you weren't, not until you realized I'd be useful and started thinking about getting me engaged to the Valetti boy to solidify those smuggling concessions you wanted." He made a sound at that, one that was embarrassed. "Yeah, I knew about that."

"Stefano?" he guessed.

"No. I just knew how to listen to what people around me were saying." Bianchi shrugged again. "All Uncle Stefano told me was where I could go when I asked him how to get out. So, yeah. It really was that bad. At least being a hitman meant I was the one who got to decide what happened to me and who I was going to sleep with."

Her father was sitting very still, hands still tucked under his chin and his untouched ice cream melting into a puddle. "That's how you really feel?"

The hell with it. Bianchi reached for her wine and drained the glass. "You did ask."

"So I did. Perhaps that was a mistake." He was looking at her like he didn't know what to make of her—like he didn't even know who she was.

Which was true enough. "Yeah, well, what's one more mistake, when you come right down to it?" She was definitely going to have to remember to drink less wine at dinner; it really didn't go well with interactions with her father. "I mean, if you really needed me to tell you all of that, I don't know how to help you. I mean, Christ. Hayato thought you'd had his mother killed and you never told him any different. And, for God's sake, do you realize that it was a good five years after we both left that he would sit in the same room and talk with me? And even longer before I could talk to him without something covering my face, all because you thought it was funny for me to poison him before his recitals? Shit. I'm lucky he even speaks to me."

"Enough." His voice was quiet, less angry than—something else, sorrowful or maybe just regretful, she couldn't say. His expression, set as it was, didn't say much, either. "It would be to your advantage to learn to tell when a man is asking you to flatter him, not flatten him."

"I give flattery where it's due." Bianchi spread her hands against the table, feeling the cool wood under her palms. "I can't—there's too much I remember to be able to play happy families with you now. And too many places that still hurt for me to laugh and say, oh yeah, in retrospect, I was an impertinent brat who didn't know how good she had it." Her voice was going harsh; God only knew what her face looked like. But he was listening, so she plowed on. "I've seen how other families work, some of 'em from the inside out, and I know it doesn't have to be the way ours was. I've seen how other Families work, too, and yeah, some of them really suck on the whole interpersonal thing, but they don't all suck." She sucked in a breath; it was unsteady. So was her voice when she went on. "I'm not here because I want to be. I'm here because I have an overdeveloped sense of duty and because there's no one else who can do it. If there were, I'd have stayed where I was, because I was happy there, damn it."

"Being a freelance hitman for the Vongola?" He didn't quite sound like he believed it. "At least your brother found himself a place in their hierarchy." He paused. "Unless you were more interested in being Cavallone's—"

What was they'd been saying about not screaming at each other? "Don't." Bianchi forced herself to unclench her teeth. "You don't want to say anything about him, I promise you, because if you do, I swear to God I will make you regret it."

"I'm just saying that you come from a better background than that."

"And I think we're done for the evening." It was that or lose what remained of her temper, so Bianchi pushed her chair back from the table. "Good night."

She left him sitting at the table and ignored his voice calling after her and made her way up to her rooms. The boxes that she'd only begun to unpack were where she'd left them; she ignored them and undressed for bed instead.

She was just ready to crawl between the turned-back sheets when she heard the low buzz of her phone from the pile of her discarded clothes as it alerted her to an incoming message.

It was from Dino, the idiot. Bianchi sat on the edge of the mattress, cradling the phone in her hands and staring at the screen and the words, you okay? until the screen dimmed.

Her fingers danced over the keys and hit send before she could think better of it. haven't killed anyone yet. was tempted, though.

The reply came back as she slid her legs under the blankets and settled against the pillows. It made her smile. some people just need killing.

not going to argue.

His reply took a little longer, short as it was. seriously. you okay?

Bianchi leaned her head back against the headboard and finally typed, long day. kind of hard in spots. i'll survive.

She gripped the phone so tightly that the casing creaked when the return message flashed across its screen. monaco, just say the word.

don't tempt me. She stabbed send before she could change her mind about it and type something else, something that wouldn't work.

can't blame me for trying, he typed. miss you.

Why did Dino have to be so damned sweet? It wasn't the slightest bit fair. Bianchi rubbed her eyes till they stopped aching and picked out the reply, carefully. yeah, me too. going to bed now, i'm tired.

The phone vibrated again as she turned out the lamp, and again as she settled herself against the unfamiliar mattress. She held out for all of three minutes before groping through the darkness and looking to see what he'd written.

Then she tossed the phone away from the bed, heard it land with a soft thump somewhere on the other side of the room, and fisted her hands in the blankets to keep herself from going after it.

And despite the sleep well, she did not fall asleep quickly, or sleep well once she did. But that was surely the fault of the unfamiliar bed and had nothing to do with Dino's final message at all, despite the way the love you of it seemed to be engraved on the insides of her eyelids. That would have been ridiculous, and Bianchi didn't have time to be ridiculous any more.