Candles everywhere. Wax collapsing. Black velvet on the table. Dice made from bone.
She tells you your father's blood is still on her floor. Under the sink. Darker tile. Years of scrubbing. Still there.
Then she pours grappa and slides the first bones toward you.
Your character sheet starts as family business.
Your Nonna makes you roll five times. She marks the numbers. The bones sit there like evidence.
She has buried the men you'll be measured against. Your father could talk his way into any room in Palermo and couldn't talk his way back out. Your grandfather got shot three times over two hundred lire and a principle. Another relative got shot in the face at thirty-three eating sfogliatelle. One die has a red stain on the corner. You leave that alone.
When the ceremony ends, church bells ring somewhere outside. Funeral or wedding. Same thing in Sicily, Nonna says.
Then heavy footsteps come up the stairs.
Your father's debt followed you home.
The collector steps in like the house belongs to him.
Now the bones have to answer for you.
Maybe the collector drops. Maybe he crawls out of the kitchen with your face burned into his future. The feud gets a name, a portrait, and somewhere to wait.
Twenty jobs. Debt collection, heists, smuggling, pizza work, surveillance, snitch-hunting, interrogation pressure, laundering, gambling, social scandal, good deeds with suspicious motives, pigeon racing across dirty rooftops.
