"I'd rather know," I tell Max. "Whatever it is, knowing is better than not knowing."

He nods. "I warn you, I don't know the details. I was only five years old at the time, so it happened" - he pauses for a moment - "about 26 years ago. I remember because it was less than a week before my fifth birthday, and I was worried that Aunt Tricia and Uncle Andy might not come to the party because of the big fight."

I can feel my eyes widen. "Aunt Tricia and Uncle Andy?"

"Your grandfather and my father were not only friends, but business colleagues."

"Business colleagues? I - my grandfather would certainly not have been involved in anything criminal."

I think about his scrupulous ethics in the law firm, lots of things he's said at our weekly all-attorneys' meetings. How frustrated some of the other attorneys get with his insistence on erring on the side of ethics and legality one hundred percent. His failure to acknowledge that there are any gray areas between right and wrong, ethical and unethical.

Max is studying me.

"I told you that you might not like hearing what I have to say."

"I don't care," I tell him, still trying to wrap my mind around the notion that my grandfather could have been a business associate of the notorious Miami crime boss Maxwell Bennett, Sr., now serving life in a federal penitentiary. "I need to know."

"All right." Max reaches for his coffee, then reconsiders and goes over to cabinet against the wall, opening the door to reveal a complete bar set-up. He takes out a glass and a bottle of bourbon and pours himself two fingers. He raises his eyebrows at me, and I shake my head no.

"I wouldn't mind another glass of wine, though." He nods, and comes back to the table, pulls the stopper out of the bottle we opened with dinner and refills my glass. I take a slow sip, letting the wine rest on my tongue for a moment before swallowing. Then I set my class down as Max takes his seat across the table from me.

"Go on," I say.

"I told you that after my father got back from Ireland, he went on to college. He studied business and finance, even took some psychology courses. Anything that he thought would make him more effective in running the family enterprise. After having his heart broken, he became single-mindedly focused on business."

Max takes a sip of his bourbon, then sets the glass down and leans back in his chair, watching me as the story unfolds.

"I think I mentioned that my grandfather's health was failing. My father started stepping in, taking over parts of the operation, even while he was still in college. It wasn't long after he graduated that he took over all aspects of the business, both the legitimate enterprises and the illegal ones."

"Okay." I'm listening and still wondering how my grandfather fits into this picture.

"My father had been to an Ivy League school, and spent four years getting to know the sons and daughters of some pretty important people. He liked how they lived, the influence they had, their involvement in society events, and he wanted that. Not only was it a lifestyle he admired, but he also felt it added an additional layer of protection for the less savory aspects of the family business."

"A veneer of legitimacy," I say, and Max nods.

"Exactly. He didn't have kids at that point, wasn't married, but I think he liked to imagine someday sending his children off to Ivy League schools, having them go into law or medicine or finance. Giving them the option of living a life separate from the main source of the wealth he would create."

"So the dream he and Nora had of leaving all criminal activities behind wasn't entirely dead," I say softly.

"For himself, that was done with. But for the next generation? He wanted to ensure they would have both choices and respectability."

"And meanwhile," I speculate, "he wanted some of that respectability for himself."

Max nods. "People who endow libraries and sit on the boards of charitable foundations, have dinner with the mayor, and write out checks supporting community projects, are much less likely to be targeted in criminal investigations. He made it a point to get himself photographed with all the right people."

"Obviously that's not a complete shield," I say, my mind going to some notorious wealthy men in the news in recent years whom the law finally caught up with. Which I guess is what ultimately did happen to Max's dad.

"Of course not," Max agrees. "But it does make law enforcement tread a bit more carefully."

"So what does all of this have to do with my grandfather?" I ask, although I'm already starting to get an idea.

"Around the time my father took over the business, your grandfather was an up-and-coming young partner at a well-respected law firm in downtown Miami. A couple of people my father knew from college and had kept in touch with mentioned him, and my father decided that Andrew Reese - and the prestigious law firm he was a partner at - had just the right image for the legitimate businesses my father was running."

Max leans forward, puts his forearms on the table. "My dad - at least in the beginning - was very careful about keeping the legitimate businesses and the unlawful ones completely separate. There was no commingling of funds, no overlap of employees."

"So that if one of the criminal enterprises got in trouble, the government couldn't attach the assets of the legitimate ones." This makes perfect sense to me.

"That's right," Max says.

"And he didn't want to use the same lawyer for his legitimate businesses that he did for the illegitimate ones."

"You catch on fast."

"So he hired the firm my grandfather was at?"

"Not exactly. He tried to hire them, but the old school partners - ones who were already familiar with my grandfather's more, shall we say, crude reputation and weren't buying my father's attempts to polish it up - told Andrew that they wanted nothing to do with the wealthy new client he was trying to bring in the door."

"I don't imagine that went over well with either my grandfather or your father," I say. I pick up my wine and swirl it absently in my glass then take a long drink, while I imagine the brash young businessman and newly crowned crime boss accustomed to getting his own way, and the junior partner at a prestigious law firm, hungry for clients and trying to build his book of business.

"So my father made Andrew an offer he couldn't refuse," Max says, and we both smile briefly at the cliched phrase.

"He guaranteed Andrew enough business to launch his own firm. And made a promise that Andrew would not be involved in anything that was illegal or unethical. In return, Andrew would not only represent the businesses, but introduce my father to all the right people, get him into organizations and boards and committees he would not otherwise have access to."

Max shakes his head. "So Andrew launched his firm. And before long it was more than just business. As different as they were, they became not just business associates, but close friends."

I settle back in my chair and try to imagine them. "You find that surprising?" I ask Max.

"Don't you?"

"No. I think maybe they weren't so different after all. Two powerful, ambitions men, each driven by a single purpose to build their businesses. The only difference is one of them drew lines he wouldn't cross."

Max finishes the thought for me. "And for the other one, the lines were blurry."

"So I guess they were successful together."

"It was a winning combination, or so I've heard. My father demanded. Your grandfather orchestrated. Andrew smoothed out the edges, and gave my father that veneer of respectability he wanted so badly."

Max looks pensively at the wall at the far end of the dining room, and I notice a framed photograph sitting on the sideboard. I get up and walk over, studying it, and Max comes up behind me. It's a wedding photo, the bride wearing a classic off-the-shoulder wedding dress with a full princess-style skirt, popularized by the designer Vera Wang in the 1990s. Her features are delicate, and her dark wavy hair is elaborate styled. She's stunning.

The man beside her bears a strong resemblance to Max, but his features are harder, more angular. Or maybe that's just my imagination. Everything about him radiates power, confidence, and purpose. But the photographer also captured the look of tenderness in his eyes as he gazes at his bride's face.

"Your parents," I say.

"Yes."

"She was so beautiful."

"Beautiful in every way," Max says as we continue to study the photo. "A beautiful face and a gentle spirit. It's no wonder my father is still obsessed with her after all these years. He never loved anyone after."

Max turns to me. "In that way, my father and I are similar. When a Bennett gives his heart, it's forever."

My own heart is pounding now, as his implication is clear. But I can't think about that now. I just can't.

"What happened next?" I ask, trying to get the conversation back on track and avoid the danger area of my own relationship with Max.

Max walks back to the table, sits down again, and I follow him, wondering how the two men who started out a friends and business associates ended up hating each other.

"By the time they got married," Max continues, "Andrew and my father had already been working together for about five years, and they were pretty tight. Your grandmother took Nora right under her wing, and swept her into Miami society. Which, of course, was exactly what my father wanted. Pretty soon the two couples were attending all sorts of charity events together, and the women were on all the same committees. Your grandmother and my mother became the best of friends."

I frown slightly. "Wouldn't there have been a big age difference between them?"

"Not so much. My mother was 25 when she came to Miami - when my father rescued her and brought her here. Patricia was probably in her early 30's.

"I think I remember hearing that she was a debutante and met and married your grandfather when they were pretty young. By the time I was born your mother would have already been in high school, or maybe off to college. So I really never got to know her. But I knew your grandmother very well."

I nod, and remember the night my Grandmother went missing. How gentle he was with her. How she called him Maxey.

"I think," Max continues, "she really liked having a little kid to spoil, since her daughter was already pretty much grown up by then. They used to take me with them when they went shopping, or had errands to run together. It was pretty much guaranteed we'd be stopping for ice cream, or going to one of those kid places with the bouncing slides and tunnels. Stopping at a toy store. One time they rented bikes with one of those kid extenders that turns an adult touring bike into a bicycle built for two, and we road all over the art deco district in South Beach." His voice is soft now as he remembers, and I imagine Max as a little boy, carefree and happy. Before he grew up to be the man who ran a criminal enterprise and was capable of shocking acts of violence.

I can't help but wonder if Max would be different if his mother hadn't died when he was still a kid.

"So my grandparents and your parents were best friends, and you called them Aunt Tricia and Uncle Andy." I picture Max as a little boy, the same handsome features but softened and rounded by childhood. He must have been adorable.

"We were like family," Max says. "Until everything fell apart."

Now I'm thinking about the fear in my grandmother's eyes when she looked at Max the night she'd wandered off, and said, "He's going to kill us all."

Who did she mean? Max's father? Gino? Who was my grandmother afraid of?

And why?