Gina entered the room, and the scene just now made her very shy.

Arthur made Dorothy a cup of coffee, and he remembered that the apartment had been Tony's family a long time ago, and Dorothy had always had the key to the house. After she left New York, the lock on the door of the apartment has not been changed, and there is nothing of value in the apartment anyway, which is not worth being patronized by others.

Dorothy took the coffee from Arthur, and stared at her brother for a long time with dark brown eyes, as if to see some flaws in it. After noticing that there were no flaws, she smiled and said, "Arthur, you have really grown up. ”

Arthur smiled slightly, he had indeed grown up, not only had he grown up, but even his soul had changed.

In Arthur's mind, memories of Dorothy came back to him, and the images flashed before his eyes like a slideshow. Dorothy is 5 years older than Arthur and is Tony's only daughter, her mother died very early, and Tony has never continued to live with her daughter. Dorothy lived with her father until she was 18 years old, and in 1985, she returned to her mother's hometown of San Francisco after she was admitted to college, and never returned.

Arthur's memories of Dorothy come back to 1985, the summer when she boarded a plane out of New York for San Francisco. Dressed in a red floral dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat, she took a cab to Manhattan and met Arthur downstairs in her apartment. The siblings hugged and said a few words, and she got into a taxi to the airport, and Tony didn't even show up to see her off. Dorothy disappeared from Arthur's life and was never heard from again.

After Tony's "disappearance", the family has been contacting Dorothy, hoping that she will return to New York to deal with the aftermath, but has never received a reply. Arthur had instructed Montolo to sell the villa, which required Dorothy's signature and her name on the property registry. So I made a few more phone calls to San Francisco, and tonight, she suddenly showed up at Arthur's house.

"Is Dad completely missing? No news at all? Dorothy mentions Tony, who looks indifferent and doesn't seem to care about her father's life or death.

"Yes, I heard that he went to Argentina and probably wanted to evade prosecution by the prosecutor's office." Arthur made up a reason to say that Tony had taken refuge in Argentina. Tony did go on a couple of vacations to Argentina in the past, where he had his property just to run away one day.

The topic didn't linger on Tony for long, as the siblings drank coffee and chatted about the past and present. The two haven't seen each other for almost 10 years, but the intimacy between relatives still comes to the face, and Arthur can't help but let himself be gentle, just talking and laughing with his sister. Dorothy glanced in the direction of the bedroom, Arthur understood what she meant, and said, "My girlfriend, Gina, is still in school, and she's a little shy. ”

"You two weren't very shy just now."

Dorothy's words made Arthur a little embarrassed, he took a sip of coffee, and said calmly: "Dorothy, Tony probably won't be able to come back, so the family decided to sell the house." Now that a buyer has been found, one-third of the money from the sale goes to the family, two-thirds. Now the family business is a little difficult. ”

According to Arthur's idea, the proceeds from the sale of the villa will be used to compete with the Gandolfil family for drug sales channels, subsidizing their downstream buyers and driving down prices to squeeze the Gandolfil family's sales space. In recent years, the development of the Luciano family has not been very good, and it has been suppressed by the anti-black group and squeezed out by the competition of the Gandolfil family, so it can only use the sale of real estate to obtain liquidity.

"Arthur, are you involved in the family business?" Dorothy asked.

Dorothy is still very clear about what her father relies on to make a living, because she is a girl, so she has never had the idea and possibility of interfering in family affairs. According to the traditional way, when she reaches adulthood, at the age of 20, she will marry the son of a certain corner of the family, or a man of the same age in another family, complete the political marriage within the Italian gang, and begin the life of a housewife with husband and children.

But times are different, she chose to pursue higher education, went to college, left New York, and planned not to return for the rest of her life. It wasn't until an accident occurred in the family, and after hesitating for a long time and repeatedly confirming that her father Tony might not be able to come back, she returned to New York and came to her brother Arthur's house.

"Hmm... I was a little involved, but I still work at Luciano and I want to open my own restaurant in the future. Arthur continued to disguise himself as a chef.

Dorothy finished her last sip of coffee, took out a cigarette from her bosom and lit it, took a puff, spit out a string of smoke rings, flicked the ash into the finished coffee cup, and said, "Arthur, I'm not going to sell the house, I'm going to move back to New York, and I'm going to live in the original home." ”

Arthur was stunned, but he didn't expect his sister to come back not to sell the house, but to inherit the house. She already had a share of the house, and in addition to that, Tony had a large deposit in the bank, gold, and a small amount of equity. As soon as a few more years later, no trace of Tony can be found, and he is legally declared dead. Dorothy paid an inheritance tax and was able to inherit her father's estate.

"What about your job in San Francisco......"

"I quit, and besides, I just got divorced yesterday, and I can't go back to San Francisco." Dorothy flicked the cigarette ash again, and said lightly.

Dorothy stayed in San Francisco after graduating from college, changed jobs three times, married her college boyfriend, and took out a loan to buy a house. After getting married, she had two miscarriages and never had children. Her husband cheated twice, she forgave twice, and the third time, she was not ready to forgive and chose to end the marriage. Just as the news of her father's disappearance came, she was finally able to go back.

Arthur also finished his cup of coffee, and things seemed to get a little complicated. He got up and went to the kitchen to make himself another drink, thinking about what to do next. I thought that Dorothy would come over, sell the house, and get the money back to San Francisco, and since then I have nothing to do with the Luciano family. In a few years, she wanted to inherit Tony's fortune and give her the money, which Arthur didn't covet.

But she didn't want to sell her house and stay in New York, so it was different. Judging from her tone, she made up her mind and did not leave a way back for herself. I quit my job, I got married, I left New York 10 years ago, and I came back 10 years later, and the people in the Luciano family are really crazy, and they are not normal people's thinking at all.

The family now needs a cash flow to support the war with the Gandofil family on the drug line, and if there is no income from the sale of the house, they have to find a way from elsewhere, but time waits for no one. Arthur's mind flashed through the idea of killing Dorothy, in which case he would become the first in line to inherit the property, and as long as some legal issues were resolved, the house would be in his name. And Tony's other possessions are his.

Arthur added a sugar cube to his coffee and stirred it in the cup with a tiny white iron spoon, his mind spinning like coffee in the cup. He still had feelings for Dorothy in his brain and body, a family affection that was thicker than water, and it was not easy for him to make up his mind to kill Dorothy.

He turned his head to look at Dorothy's back sitting in the living room, her long chestnut hair was not as thick and fluffy and shiny as it had been when she was a girl. The originally tall and thin back became slightly rickety, and fine lines appeared on her neck, and time left many marks on her body. In the past, she was a princess in the family, what made her willing to leave her palace and go to the West Coast to live an ordinary life for 10 years?

Arthur thought of that cellar in the villa.

"Dorothy, you know, old Larry is dead, too." Arthur returns to the living room with his coffee and mentions Old Larry.

"yes, no one told me." Dorothy's tone was still faint, and she didn't seem to care about the old Larry who had watched her grow up, and she would die if she died. It's strange in her attitude, but it's not strange to think of what old Larry and Tony did.

"Speaking of old Larry, do you remember Christmas in 1983? You and Dior's son grabbed a toy, and you couldn't beat him, so you ran out alone, trying to walk back to Manhattan by yourself, only I chased it out, do you remember? ”

Dorothy mentions the past, and Arthur searches through his memories, but has no memory of it. The memories of this body are mostly neat and neatly arranged in the mind, but they are mainly concentrated after 1983. The memories before 1983, like ordinary people, are chaotic, some things are remembered very clearly, some things are only vaguely remembered outlines, the specific time, place, and details of the event are not very clear. What Dorothy said about this, Arthur had no impression at all.

Seeing Arthur shake his head, Dorothy continued: "It was cold and dark that night, and I followed you to let you go back, but you never willed. Then something very strange happened, there were floating candles on the road, and I told you to lie down, and you lay down, and the flames passed us. Later, old Larry came out to look for us and found us both under a big tree on the side of the road, and we seemed to faint. I told old Larry about it, and he told me that it was the souls of the Indians who were going to their paradise, and that there were so many dead souls of the Indians in this land that they had lined up to this day and had not finished their journey......"

The siblings fell silent, and Dorothy only thought about it suddenly, and she always felt that many things had been different since that night. She was 16 years old at the time, just about to become an adult, and began to transform from a young girl to a young adult. Arthur couldn't remember it at all, but Dorothy's words reminded him of something else.

That card, that 6 of hearts, he still remembers the poem behind it:

I was caught up by you in the dark night, and you made me lie down with a candle in hand. I also receive the blessing of the soul of the transcendent.

Yes, our future is different, your hut faces the sun, and all around me must be the sea, and the north.

Yes, thy garden flowers bloom first, and mine, sow in the bitter cold.

Yet there was a summer when we were queens, but you, crowned in June.