<div class="floatright">(https://i.imgur.com/BFEN7UV.jpg)<div align="center"><strong>Helena ''Ellie'' Gentili</strong></div></div>Ellie was lounging on a méridienne by the window, reading Willy Vlauntin’s latest novel,<em>The Night Always Comes</em>, when she heard the ring of the bodyguard’s cellphone and the resulting furtive conversation. She loved her big sister but the way she tried to protect her from the realities of<em>la Famiglia</em>could be so annoying. She was an adult now and could be expected to act like one, but Ellie felt trapped as Angie’s<em>sorellina</em>. Sure, there were positives to that—but it also meant she wasn’t always taken seriously. At least, that’s what it felt like.<br/><br/>Standing, Ellie put the novel on the windowsill and crossed over to where the bodyguard stood trying, unsuccessfully, to look like he hadn’t just been on his cell talking about her. “Who was that?” Ellie said and put a hand on the bodyguard’s broad chest and smoothed his tie. Her hand was pale against his black tie and she could feel the rapid beat of the bodyguard’s heart at her touch. She almost laughed. Men were so easy—women too, but, for all her flirting, she didn’t really like men. Not in the way they thought. She just found them to be enjoyable playthings. With women, though, she sometimes felt something else. Not love. At least she didn’t think it was love. Anyway, it was something different, leave it at that.<br/><br/>“Who is this private investigator looking into our family?” Ellie said her hand still on the bodyguard’s chest as she looked up at him, her cat-green eyes playing hide-and-seek behind her dark bangs. “And what is it that they are asking?”<br/><br/>Whatever it was it was a dangerous line of questioning. Sure, the family was constantly being investigated, but that was the government and part of the game. For some citizen or even another family to be asking around about her sister—or maybe even her—was something altogether different. It was the sort of thing that could find the questioner buried beneath a freshly poured cement slab or in a shallow grave outside the city. Or it could even be an opportunity for an ambitious girl to prove herself to her big sister.<br/>