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torturing Matt, then two. Before dinner Chris watched as Sal Jr. ripped a toy truck from Matt’s hands, pushing him to the floor in the process, while out of the corner of his eye he saw Sal Sr. beaming.
    Before the desert was served, Chris excused himself and quickly drove to his and Teresa’s house, only ten minutes away, where he picked up the Glock .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol that had been one of Junior Boy’s wedding presents, along with some rope. When he returned to Aldo’s house, he saw Sal standing by himself in the driveway smoking a cigarette. He parked and got out of his car with the Glock pointing at Sal’s chest. He forced Sal into the driver’s seat of his car, then got into the rear seat behind him and whacked him on the head with the gun with enough force to daze him so that he could tie him up at hands and feet with no trouble. In the house, he found Aldo Jr. and told him there was something he wanted to show him in his car. Outside, he poked the Glock hard into Aldo Jr.’s ribs and told him to get in the car next to his brother, who was awake but moaning. Chris got in the back seat and placed the gun against the back of Aldo,Jr.’s head.
    “I don’t ever want to hear your voice again,” he said, “or your brother’s. I don’t ever want to see a cross-eyed look from either of you. And I want Sal’s jerkoff son to stay away from Matt. I would kill you both right now, but I think you should have this one warning. Do you understand?”
    Aldo, who was sweating profusely and had turned white, managed to get a yes out before Chris told him to untie his brother and take him into the house.
    At home, Chris called Teresa and told her to get a ride home with someone. Later, when the kids were sleeping, Chris quickly packed a bag while Teresa hovered around him in their bedroom.
    “Tell me again why you’re leaving,” she said.
    “I almost killed your two asshole cousins. I don’t know what stopped me.”
    “So you think you’re a killer like your father?”
    “I don’t know what I think. I know I have to leave though.”
    “What about the kids?”
    “I’ll come by and talk to them.”
    “My father will be heartbroken.”
    “I’ve told him the family business is not for me. He should have kept Aldo and his idiot sons off my back.”
    “What about me? I thought you loved me?”
    Chris had finished packing and was standing by the bed looking at his wife of five years, in many ways more a stranger to him now than when they first met. Which of them had changed more? Which of them had tried harder? He didn’t know.
    “They forced me to choose,” he said, “and I’m choosing.”
    “You didn’t answer my question.”
    “I don’t know if I love you. That’s the truth.”
    “That means you don’t.”
    “Teresa, did you think the constant fighting, the constant pressure to join the family, wouldn’t have an effect on me?”
    “Your father’s a hit man, your brother’s a junkie, so you think you have to be a saint, is that it? You can’t condescend to be a part of my family. We’re dirty, we’re sinners. Everyone’s dirty, Chris, everyone’s a sinner. You refuse to grow up, to open your eyes and see that.”
    Chris hired a lawyer, rented a small apartment in the West Village and waited for the DiGiglios to react. But they never did. He was allowed to divorce Teresa. No mention was ever made of what he did to Aldo Jr. and Sal. After a while, he stopped looking over his shoulder. He left the U.S. Attorney’s office and took a job with DeVoss and Kline, a respected and successful white collar criminal defense firm on Wall Street. In time, his visitation arrangement became more like shared custody. Tess and Matt adored the life he offered them in the city. His career soared. In 1995, he was made a partner at the firm, and in 1997, he bought a spacious three-bedroom loft in Tribeca, from which he could walk to work.
    In those years, if his life was a record, this was the A