"Don't drink that.

They moved Sofia to Gabriel's house on the north side before midnight.

It was not a mansion.

It was a large, quiet house on a tree-lined street with good locks and men Nora had already stopped counting positioned at intervals she was learning to recognize.

Sofia was walked in wrapped in Gabriel's coat, her feet in mismatched socks because only one shoe had been found, her dark hair loose around her face.

She looked like her brother around the eyes.

Same gray.

Same quality of watching.

Nora had expected to be dropped somewhere — a corner, a hotel, her own front door.

Instead Gabriel had said, "Come inside," and she had followed because Sofia had reached out in the elevator and taken her hand without explanation, and Nora had not been able to think of a reason to let go.

They sat in the kitchen.

Someone made tea without being asked.

It appeared on the table in plain white mugs and Nora wrapped both hands around hers and felt, for the first time in hours, the specific cold that comes after sustained fear begins to leave the body.

Sofia sat across from her.

"You're the one who stopped him," Sofia said.

It wasn't a question.

"I noticed something at the bar."

"Gabriel told me." Sofia looked down at her mug.

"He said you saw the lipstick."

"It caught the light."

"That's my shade." Sofia touched her lower lip absently.

"Dark cherry.

Marco gave it to me.

For our anniversary."

Nora was quiet.

"He's been planning this for a while," Sofia said.

It came out very flat, the way things do when someone has moved past the shock and arrived at the part that simply has to be said out loud.

"Hasn't he."

"I don't know enough to say."

"I do." Sofia looked up.

"I just didn't want to."

Gabriel came in from the hallway and sat down at the head of the table.

He looked at his sister for a long moment.

"Tell me about the wine," he said.

"It was already poured when I came downstairs.

He said he'd opened something special.

I had maybe a third of the glass." She paused.

"I remember thinking it tasted slightly wrong.

Like something underneath the wine.

I didn't say anything because I thought I was imagining it."

"You weren't imagining it."

"No." She set her mug down carefully.

"I felt wrong within forty minutes.

Heavy.

Slow.

I sat down on the bed to put my shoes on and I couldn't remember which shoe I'd already done."

Gabriel's jaw worked.

"Why did he want me not to come tonight?" Sofia asked.

"Because you were supposed to be in that chair.

And I was supposed to drink from a glass that had your lipstick on it."

Sofia stared at him.

"He wanted it to look like I—"

"Yes."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"Why?" Sofia's voice cracked on the single word.

Not from weakness.

From the specific pain of a question whose answer you already know and are asking anyway because saying it yourself makes it real.

"Because Marco has been moving money," Gabriel said.

"My money.

Through accounts I didn't know existed.

I found out four days ago.

I told no one." He paused.

"Except Anthony."

Sofia closed her eyes.

"Anthony told him," she said.

"That's what I believe."

"So Marco needed you gone before you could act on it."

"And he needed it to look like it came from inside the family.

From you.

So that even if questions were asked later, the answer pointed somewhere it couldn't be answered."

Nora set her mug down.

Her hands were steady.

She wasn't sure when that had happened.

"He used her lipstick," she said quietly.

"On the glass.

So that if you'd dr*nk it and something happened, and anyone looked at that glass afterward—"

"They would see Sofia's mark," Gabriel said.

"And Sofia would have no memory of the evening.

No alibi.

No clear account of where she'd been or what she'd done."

Sofia opened her eyes.

"He dr*gged me to frame me for kjlling my own brother."

No one corrected her.

Because there was nothing to correct.

Gabriel reached across the table and put his hand over his sister's.

He didn't say anything.

He didn't need to.

Nora looked at the two of them and thought about her father asleep in his recliner with the television flickering blue across his face, and the particular kind of love that lives in ordinary rooms, and how some people spend their whole lives trying to destroy what other people spend their whole lives trying to protect.

"What happens now?" she asked.