The text came at 2 a.m. like it was good news—my mother casually told me she’d sold my house while I was away, using an old legal document, and spent the money on my sister’s wedding. When I told her to stop the deal, she laughed—called me selfish, dramatic, ungrateful—and said I could “explain myself” at the family reunion.

The Castellano case went first. It had to. Angela mattered more than my grief, which is as it should be. She testified over three long days in a courtroom fortified by routine and nerves. I watched portions from the rear bench and the rest by feed from a secure room. She spoke about cash deliveries concealed in produce invoices, trucking routes used for off-books movement, union pressure chains, one murder she heard planned on speakerphone because Marco was stupid enough to conduct loyalty business in the kitchen, and another whose aftermath she saw in security footage she was never meant to access. She identified Vincent Castellano Sr. by voice before she identified him by face. That impressed the jury. It impressed me too. There are kinds of courage that look dramatic and kinds that look like a woman in a modest suit answering direct examination while her hands shake only once.