My Birthday Invite Went to the Wrong Number—Then the Mafia Boss Walked In

I should have asked Stefano to leave.

Instead, I watched him remove his overcoat and hang it carefully over a metal folding chair. Beneath it he wore a charcoal suit without a tie. No birthday balloons, no gift bag, no explanation for why the name Paula Romano had turned his face to stone.

"How did you know her?" I asked.

He looked at Mrs. Delaney and Mr. Avery, both pretending not to listen.

"Later."

"No. You walked into my birthday party because I accidentally texted you. You don't get to say later."

His eyes returned to mine. They were darker than I expected, almost black in the yellow parish-hall light.

"She was my sister."

I laughed once because the alternative was falling over.

"Paula never had a brother."

"She did."

"She told me everything."

"No," Stefano said quietly. "She told you what kept you safe."

That sentence irritated me enough to cut through the shock.

"I was seventeen, not undercover."

"For Paula, sometimes those were the same thing."

Mrs. Delaney chose that moment to announce that cake should not be held hostage by family secrets. She lit thirty-seven candles, although the cake was too small and the last nine leaned dangerously toward the frosting.

We gathered around the table.

I closed my eyes.

My mother had made up a birthday prayer when Claire and I were little. It was not church doctrine. It was just ours.

"For the year behind me," I whispered, "thank you for what stayed..."

A voice joined mine.

"...and thank you for what left."

My eyes opened.

Stefano was looking at the candles.

Together, without planning it, we finished the next line.

"For the year ahead, give me courage before comfort, truth before pride, and one good person when the room feels empty."

Mrs. Delaney made the sign of the cross. Mr. Avery stopped chewing.

I could barely breathe.

"How do you know that?"

Stefano looked at me with something close to grief.

"Paula used to say it. Every year."

"My mother invented it."

"Then your mother gave my sister something she carried until the day she died."

The word hit harder than it should have. Maybe because I had spent twenty years leaving a small door open in my mind, a foolish little place where Paula had moved away, changed her name, married someone loud, had three kids, and simply chosen not to find me.

"Died?"

Stefano's jaw tightened.

"Eight years ago."

I stepped back from the table.

"You came here because of her."

"At first, I came because a dead number received a message from a woman using your name."

"At first?"

Before he could answer, glass shattered in the front door.

Mrs. Delaney screamed.

A brick rolled across the floor and stopped under the cake table.

Taped to it was a white envelope.