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loss of our families. When we were done talking, emotionally spent, he asked if I wanted to watch one of his favorite movies. Huddling together, we stared at
The Shawshank Redemption,
and I understood why he liked it so much. It’s all about escape.
    After returning to the city, our romance, if that was what it had been, slowed and cooled—I was diverted by looking for my family, of course, and the street war had begun to rage—but the bond forged on the flight remained. I sat up on the side of the mattress now, wondering if Tyler’s feelings for me, combined with his own emotional scars, outweighed his loyalty to the Outfit—could I tell him about my family and ultimate power, and trust him to somehow help me?
    The answer was a definite maybe.
    But it wasn’t an absolute yes, which meant no, and I put down the phone.
    It was just past midnight, Saturday surrendering to Sunday.
    Doug and I now had twenty-four hours to locate the vault before returning to Fep Prep on Monday morning. Trying to fool myself to sleep, I shut my eyes and began counting in Italian—
uno, due, tre
—but the numbers reminded me of people.
    I pictured my mother as she’d been the last time I’d seen her—smooth olive skin, silken black hair, lithe, delicate hands—but couldn’t help imagining a red stump where Juan Kone had sliced off her finger. Then I saw my dad, tall and lean with an easy smile, and purple scars on his wrists, track marks from where Juan had extracted gallons of blood—I’d never seen the wounds, but I knew he’d been experimented on, and tortured.
    Finally, Lou walked through my mind.
    He was as pale and bruised as I’d seen him at the Ferris wheel.
    Lou hooked my pinkie and said,
Rispolis stick together even when we aren’t together. All or nothing, remember?
    I remembered.
    Nothing, neither fear nor anxiety, could stop me from looking for ultimate power.
    I stood and paced the room, opening drawers, turning over loose papers, seeking—what? A sign maybe, a signal that my subterranean search wouldn’t be in vain. I pushed aside the dictionary, the journal, and stared at the old notebook. I’d been through its chapters countless times, scratching out the truth about my family, using its criminal methods to survive. Through trial and error, and sometimes luck, I’d learned that its secrets weren’t always so obviously placed, where just anyone could find them. I’d turned every one of its pages searching for information about ultimate power.
    Or had I?
    Rereading the final entry for the eighth chapter, “
Volta,
” revealed nothing new. I examined the page, hoping it was like the ones that had concealed Uncle Jack’s scribblings in Buondiavolese, but no—it was a thin, single sheet. The notebook was bound in leather while the inside back cover was overlaid with a rectangle of yellowed paper glued into place. I looked at the key’s outline and Nunzio’s faint letters, BURGLR, using a fingernail to dig at the cover’s corner. The paper crumbled into pasty bits until a strip peeled away. Slowly, like removing a stamp from an envelope, I pulled the page free and turned it over. It was a note from Great-Grandpa Nunzio to my grandpa Enzo:
    Caro Enzo,
    Io sono vecchio e i miei occhi blu sono sempre così debole che non posso vedere la pagina. Presto, vostro fratello Giaccomo registrerà tutte le mie parole per me. Ma ho bisogno di scrivere questa lettera io.
    Come i miei occhi si dissolve, quindi fa ghiaccio furioso. Il tuo tempo come Consigliere rapidamente si avvicina. Ho insegnato molte lezioni, ma tre richiedono ripetere.
    Questa lettera è un ricordo utile ed essenziale . . .
    I put it aside, lifted the Italian dictionary, and translated the entire letter until I was able to read it:
    Dear Enzo,
    I am old and my blue eyes are growing so weak that I can hardly see the page. Soon, your brother