The alley smelled like wet asphalt and the faint, oily smoke that always clung to the older parts of the city. It was the kind of place people walked through with their heads down, the kind of place where secrets could be kept because no one cared enough to look. I chose it deliberately—neutral, anonymous, a place far from Dante’s bright kitchen and the cameras he’d had installed along every route I used. If I was going to do something that felt like betrayal, at least let it happen in a place that had never known my name.

My hands shook so badly I almost dropped the paper cup of...