It was just past twelve o'clock when Lucrezia shut her book and went to the kitchen to get some lunch. She'd been studying since seven thirty and still she felt she would never make it.

Not that she was a bad planner – she considered herself the best planner in the family, actually, although neither of her brothers agreed with her – but she'd taken on two bachelors whose timeslots ran more or less parallel to each other, which was simply impractical if not impossible. She had an exam for international governance the next day, a paper due for Early Modern Italian literature at the end of the week, and then the week after there was another exam that could either be for governance or for history. It didn't help that she could hardly concentrate, or that she'd slept terribly for days now.

She went to the kitchen and peered into the fridge while she gathered her long blonde hair together in a high ponytail. It was dark brown originally, but that just didn't do a thing for her. Personally, that is. The idea of looking like an archetype dumb blonde while she really wasn't appealed to Lucrezia. She'd told that to Cesare once, who'd laughed and said that the Italians have an idiom for it: fare la gatta morta, or "acting like a dead cat". Not too flattering, perhaps, but at least one could expect the dead cat to be blonde.

The fridge was filled to the brim, but nothing looked very desirable. Lucrezia almost decided to take something out randomly, when a voice spoke from behind the open fridge door: 'Good morning, sis.'

She didn't close the door to expose the person there, because she'd rather look at the food she didn't want to eat.

'How's your paper coming?' Her oldest brother asked.

She didn't answer. She might have, if she could have told him that it was coming along just fine – except she didn't even have a topic yet, and he'd hear right away if she lied.

'You have a topic yet?' He asked.

She resisted the urge to grunt and give herself away. 'What are you doing here? You don't live here anymore,' she snapped at him. She was still looking into the fridge, but it might as well have been completely empty for all that registered with her.

'I'm taking you out,' Cesare answered. 'You know, in the fun way, not the assassin way. In case that needed specifying.'

Their father Rodrigo worked for the deputy director of the Directorate of Operations, that is, the Clandestine Service of the CIA – the one that collects foreign intelligence and plans covert actions. Explosions and state secrets and things like that. Rodrigo's specific job title was long and intricate and, so his children suspected, prone to change while the actual job requirements did not – but most of what he did consisted of overseeing regional CIA divisions, the most notable of which was the Vatican. When they were young, Rodrigo's children spent a couple of years calling their father a spy, despite his argument that he at least had to see the Pope once in a while in order to spy on him. Still, he frequently met with men in red or purple frocks, so that when the children got older and of an age to understand why some men wore fancy dresses, they took to calling Rodrigo "the Pope". He liked that better than spy, though he never admitted it.

'Well, it didn't,' Lucrezia said, still talking to radishes and juice boxes. 'And I can't.'

Cesare snorted from behind the fridge door. 'Why, you have more moping to do? Staring soulfully out of the window, thinking about the meaning of life and the essence of all things crude…'

'As a matter of fact-' She started.

'Boring,' he interrupted. 'You're coming with me.'

'I was going to say: as a matter of fact, I can't because I really don't want to.'

'Come on, don't be sour to your favourite brother. Be sour to Juan.'

Juan was the second-oldest brother and a distinctly unlikeable person, although both their father and Juan himself would likely die without ever knowing it.

'I'm not being anything. I just don't care to go out,' Lucrezia said.

Cesare sighed and leaned against the fridge door, causing it to slam shut. It revealed a lean, dark-haired man with hazel eyes that sparkled as they scrutinized the world, and noticed everything that it lacked and that it was to blame for.

Lucrezia said 'hey!' when the view of radishes and juice boxes was replaced by that of Cesare, but he ignored her. 'Then we'll stay in,' he said tiredly, as if he were already stretching himself impossibly thin.

'To go out with you. I don't like you,' Lucrezia lied.

She left the fridge and her domineering brother and rummaged around in the kitchen cabinets to find herself a wine glass. She wasn't a day drinker or anything, but it was a family habit to drink water out of wine glasses. They drank everything else out of champagne or whiskey glasses.

As Lucrezia filled her glass with water, she chided herself for not concentrating better and going down for lunch instead. Though Cesare probably would have bothered his sister no matter where she was; he would follow her to goddamn Jupiter, truly.

When she turned back from the sink, Cesare was leaning against the kitchen island, looking at her.

'You don't like what I did, that's different,' he said. 'Which is why, today, I'm going to do something that you will like.'

'Like leaving me alone?' Lucrezia tried.

'Ha-ha.'

He reached into his back pocket and showed her the two small leaflets he'd kept there.

'You have tickets to the game!' She said, a little too excitedly for her taste. She didn't even care that much for football itself: she liked the experience of being in an arena jam-packed with people that were all so full of passion that you would never entirely believe they were strangers. All the spirit they exuded, the heart and the lust for blood.

Well, something profound, anyway.

'Yes!' Cesare replied, mimicking his sister's pitch. 'And before you ask: it's a package deal.' He wafted the papers around to indicate her and himself.

She grunted, but the truth was that Cesare was an inherent part of the "experience" and thus going to a game was always a package deal. She'd never realized this, nor had she ever considered the fact that she'd never gone to a game without him. Cesare did realize this, but it was part of the game not to bring it up.

'I'm working,' Lucrezia said.

'Yeah, and how's that going?'

Lucrezia looked away, but it was right on the nose and he knew it.

'Look,' he said, tapping the tickets on the surface of the kitchen island. 'The best way to get over your inability to focus is to distract yourself. You have to give into it, Crezia, otherwise it will always lurk on the edge of your consciousness trying to pull you in.' He made a scary face and growled at his sister, who regarded him sceptically.

'What?' She said.

'You need to take control of your life and challenge fortune! This is not a ticket to a football game, it's a ticket to challenge fortune.'

'But where do you come up with such a rich fountain of bull?'

'Niccolò Machiavelli, if you must know, sister. You can't possibly resist his reasoning.'

'So I need to go with you because Machiavelli told me to?'

'In effect.'

Lucrezia rolled her eyes, although she did love Machiavelli. Then she gave a laborious sigh and said: 'Well, at least I won't have to listen to you, since I'll be too busy watching the game.'

'That's the spirit!' Cesare said. 'I'll wait in the car.'

Lucrezia muttered something indelicate and then went to change. Cesare didn't go to the car immediately: instead, he went over to where his sister had stood and drank the water that she hadn't touched.