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two men with eggshell masks over their faces; he also saw the guns in their hands, but they seemed unreal. He could not have given any details about their clothing, their hair. He was paralyzed with shock. He could not even have said if they were black or white, naked or clothed. They could have been ten feet tall or two.
    But Astorre had been alert as soon as the black sedan stopped. He saw Stace fire his gun and thought the left hand pulled the trigger. He saw Franky fire the Uzi, and that was definitely left-handed. He caught a fleeting glance at the driver, a round-headed man, obviously heavy. The two shooters moved with the grace of well-conditioned athletes. As Astorre dropped to the sidewalk, he reached out to pull the Don down with him, but he was a fraction of a second too late. And now he was covered with the Don’s blood.
    Then he saw the children move like a whirlwind of terror, a huge red dot at the center of it. They were screaming. He saw the Don splayed over the steps as if death had disjointed his skeleton itself. And he felt an enormous dread of what all this would do to his life and the lives of those dearest to him.
    Nicole came to stand over the Don’s body. Her knees folded against her will, and she kneeled next to him. Silently, she reached out to touch her father’s bloody throat. And then she wept as if she would weep forever.

CHAPTER 3
    T HE ASSASSINATION of Don Raymonde Aprile was an astounding event to the members of his former world. Who would dare to risk killing such a man, and to what purpose? He had given away his empire; there was no realm to steal. Dead, he could no longer lavish his beneficent gifts or use his influence to help someone unfortunate with the law or fate.
    Could it be some long-postponed revenge? Was there some hidden gain that would come to light? Of course, there might be a woman, but he had been a widower for close to thirty years and had never been seen with a woman; he was not regarded as an admirer of female beauty. The Don’s children were above suspicion. Also, this was a professional hit, and they did not have the contacts.
    So his killing was not only a mystery but almost sacrilegious. A man who had inspired so much fear, who had gone unharmed by the law and jackals alike while he ruled a vast criminal empire for over thirty years—how could he be brought so to death? And what an irony, when he had finally found the path of righteousness and placed himself under the protection of society, that he would live for only three short years.
    What was even more strange was the lack of any longtime furor after the Don’s death. The media soon deserted the story, the police were secretive, and the FBI shrugged it off as a local matter. It seemed as if all the fame and power of Don Aprile had been washed away in his mere three years of retirement.
    The underground world showed no interest. There were no retaliatory murders—all the Don’s friends and former loyal vassals seemed to have forgotten him. Even the Don’s children seemed to have put the whole affair behind them and accepted their father’s fate.
    No one seemed to care—no one except Kurt Cilke.
    K urt Cilke, FBI agent in charge in New York, decided to take a hand in the case, though it was strictly a local homicide for the NYPD. He decided to interview the Aprile family.
    A month after the Don’s funeral, Cilke took his deputy agent, Bill Boxton, with him to call on Marcantonio Aprile. They had to be careful of Marcantonio. He was head of programming of a major TV network and had a lot of clout in Washington. A polite phone call arranged an appointment through his secretary.
    Marcantonio received them in his plush office suite at the network’s midtown headquarters. He greeted them graciously, offering them coffee, which they refused. He was a tall, handsome man with creamy olive skin, exquisitely dressed in a dark suit and an extraordinary pink-and-red tie manufactured by a designer whose ties were