“I was countersigning a ten-million-dollar patent license under a Department of Defense classification stamp when my mother called.

“”Isabella’s marrying into the Marchettis this weekend. You must come home.””

Click. She hung up.

The Marchettis. One of the Five Mafia Families.

For a Vitale girl to marry a Marchetti was what my mother had been praying for for twenty years.

I opened the friends-and-family group chat I’d had muted for a long time.