Chapter 2 - THE WAITRESS WHO SAW TOO MUCH
“What’s your name?”
Sadie swallowed.
“Sadie.”
Dominic Russo crouched so they were nearly eye level.
“Last name.”
“Bennett.”
Behind him, the restaurant looked as though a bomb had gone off.
Broken glass covered the floor. Customers were being pushed toward the kitchen exit. One of Dominic’s guards groaned while another man pressed a napkin against his shoulder.
The giant assassin had not moved.
Sadie looked toward him.
“Did I kill him?”
Dominic followed her gaze.
“No.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“He’s breathing.”
Sadie almost collapsed from relief.
Then the giant coughed.
A horrible, wet sound.
Dominic’s expression changed immediately.
“Frank.”
A surviving guard approached.
“Boss.”
“Hospital. Different ambulance from ours. I want him alive.”
Frank stared at the attacker.
“He tried to put a steel bar through your head.”
“That’s why I want him breathing.”
Sadie hugged her burned hand against her apron.
Dominic noticed.
“Let me see.”
“I’m fine.”
“That answer didn’t work the first time.”
She hesitated.
Then held out her hand.
The skin across two fingers had turned angry red.
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“Second-degree burn, maybe.”
“You a doctor?”
“No.”
“Then maybe.”
Something flashed in his eyes.
Amusement.
Again.
Sadie could not understand how sarcasm kept escaping her around a man people were too frightened to address incorrectly.
Maybe terror and exhaustion had finally mixed into stupidity.
Dominic stood.
“Come with me.”
Her stomach dropped.
“Where?”
“To get that treated.”
“I can’t.”
He slowly turned.
Sadie pointed at the dining room.
“I’m still working.”
For the first time since the shooting, Dominic Russo looked genuinely confused.
“Your restaurant is a crime scene.”
“I know.”
“My table was shot three times.”
“I noticed.”
“The police are going to close this place.”
“Carl will still dock me if I leave without clocking out.”
Dominic stared at her.
Sadie wished the floor would open.
Then Dominic looked toward the manager.
Carl had been hiding behind the wine refrigerator.
“Carl.”
The man appeared instantly.
“Yes, Mr. Russo?”
“Is she clocked out?”
Carl looked at Sadie.
Then at Dominic.
“Yes.”
Sadie’s eyes narrowed.
“That’s interesting because thirty seconds ago—”
“You’re clocked out,” Carl repeated quickly.
Dominic reached into his jacket.
Sadie tensed.
He removed a folded stack of bills.
She stepped back.
“No.”
His hand stopped.
“You dropped three gallons of boiling water on a man trying to murder me.”
“By accident.”
“I’m aware.”
“I’m not taking money for that.”
“It isn’t payment.”
“Then what is it?”
“For your shift.”
“My employer pays my shift.”
Dominic glanced at Carl.
“Apparently not enough.”
Carl looked as though he wanted to disappear.
Sadie’s face burned hotter than her hand.
“I don’t want charity.”
Dominic’s expression changed.
“This isn’t charity.”
“It feels like it.”
He studied her for a long second.
Then put the cash away.
“All right.”
Sadie hadn’t expected that.
Most wealthy men she had served treated refusal like a temporary misunderstanding.
Dominic simply accepted it.
That made her trust him a fraction more.
Which was probably dangerous.
A detective entered through the broken doors.
Dominic’s men stiffened.
Dominic did not.
The detective looked at the body near the host stand.
“Jesus.”
“He’s alive,” Dominic said.
“Shame.”
Sadie’s eyes widened.
The detective noticed her.
“You the waitress?”
Sadie nodded.
“Need your statement.”
Dominic stepped aside.
For forty minutes, Sadie repeated everything.
The doors.
The gunshots.
The crowbar.
The slipping shoe.
The urn.
Nothing she said sounded heroic.
Because it had not been.
When the detective asked whether she had seen the attacker before, she said no.
Then something bothered her.
She looked toward the giant.
Paramedics were loading him onto a stretcher.
His military-green coat had been cut open.
Underneath, he wore a black shirt.
On his right wrist was a thin red cord bracelet.
Sadie stared.
She had seen one exactly like it earlier.
Not on the killer.
On someone at Dominic’s table.
“Wait.”
The detective paused.
“What?”
Sadie stepped closer.
“That bracelet.”
Dominic looked over.
“What about it?”
“I saw one like that tonight.”
The room became quiet.
“Where?” Dominic asked.
Sadie frowned, trying to reconstruct dinner service.
One guard had worn a silver watch.
Another wore nothing.
The man who had been sitting to Dominic’s left before the attack—
No.
Not a guard.
A man who had arrived twenty minutes before the shooting.
Mid-forties.
Navy suit.
Gray at the temples.
He had leaned close to Dominic and whispered something before leaving through the side entrance.
Sadie had refilled his water.
He had been wearing that same thin red cord around his wrist.
“Who was the man in the navy suit?”
Dominic’s face went still.
“What man?”
“He sat with you earlier.”
The surviving guard Frank looked at Dominic.
Sadie continued.
“Gray hair. Maybe forty-five. Expensive watch. Red string on his right wrist.”
Dominic’s eyes changed.
“That was Vincent.”
“Who?”
“My consigliere.”
The detective stared.
“Vincent Marconi?”
Dominic ignored him.
Sadie nodded toward the assassin.
“He had the same bracelet.”
Frank shook his head.
“Lots of people wear red strings.”
“I know.”
Sadie thought harder.
“There was something else.”
Dominic stepped closer.
“What?”
“When the man—Vincent—left, he bumped into me near the bar.”
“And?”
“I apologized.”
“That seems normal.”
“He smelled like cedar.”
Frank frowned.
Sadie pointed toward the killer’s coat.
“So does that.”
The detective actually leaned down.
The coat smelled strongly of cedar and tobacco.
Dominic’s expression hardened.
“Vincent smokes Dominican cigars in a cedar-lined office.”
Sadie looked at the coat.
“There’s ash on the collar.”
Frank bent closer.
Dark flecks marked the fabric.
Then he reached into the torn inner pocket.
His hand emerged holding a brass key.
The key bore a stamped number.
17B.
Dominic stared at it.
Sadie saw something pass through his face.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“What is it?” Frank asked.
Dominic took the key.
“Storage room seventeen-B.”
“Where?”
Dominic’s voice became very quiet.
“My private warehouse.”
No one spoke.
Sadie suddenly understood why the air had changed.
Access to a mafia boss’s private warehouse was probably not something giant assassins found on the sidewalk.
Dominic looked at her.
“You noticed a bracelet, a smell, ash, and a key while a man was trying to kill me?”
Sadie swallowed.
“I wait tables.”
“That explains it?”
“You learn to notice who wants ranch before they ask.”
The detective snorted.
Dominic almost smiled.
Then another officer approached.
“We searched the shooter.”
“And?”
“No wallet. No phone.”
Dominic looked at the stretcher disappearing through the doors.
“Someone cleaned him.”
Sadie suddenly remembered something.
Her stomach tightened.
“Not completely.”
Dominic turned.
“What?”
She looked toward the service corridor.
“When he hit me, something fell out of his coat.”
“Where?”
“I thought it was a receipt.”
She hurried toward the overturned urn.
Dominic followed.
Near the baseboard, beneath a broken napkin holder, Sadie found a small white rectangle soaked at one corner.
Not a receipt.
A valet ticket.
Lombardi’s did not offer valet parking.
Dominic took it.
On the front was the name of a private club.
THE RITTENHOUSE CIRCLE.
On the back, handwritten in blue ink, was a time.
10:30.
And two letters.
V.M.
Dominic’s face became utterly expressionless.
Frank whispered, “Vincent Marconi.”
Sadie looked between them.
“You think he hired that man?”
Dominic did not answer.
The detective asked, “Where’s Vincent now?”
Dominic reached for his phone.
Called.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Frank tried.
Straight to voicemail.
The detective swore.
Dominic looked toward the broken restaurant doors.
Rain blew inside.
For years, Vincent Marconi had been more than a lieutenant.
He had been beside Dominic when Dominic’s father died.
Beside him when rival crews challenged his control.
Beside him at funerals.
Weddings.
Trials.
Vincent had baptized Dominic’s nephew.
He knew where Dominic slept.
Which doctors treated him.
Which guards protected him.
Which restaurants he visited without announcing it.
Dominic closed his hand around the brass warehouse key.
“No.”
Frank looked at him.
“Boss?”
Dominic shook his head once.
“Vincent didn’t do this.”
Sadie studied him.
“You’re sure?”
Dominic looked at her.
“Yes.”
She should have kept quiet.
Any reasonable person would have.
Instead, Sadie said, “Then somebody worked very hard to make you believe he did.”
That stopped him.
Dominic stared at her.
And for the first time that night, he looked less like a mafia boss deciding whom to kill.
He looked like a man realizing the most obvious answer might be exactly the trap someone wanted him to choose.
Then Sadie’s manager appeared.
“Sadie.”
She turned.
Carl looked furious now that police and danger had shifted away.
“Kitchen. Now.”
She frowned.
“Why?”
“You knocked over three gallons of water, destroyed an urn, and we have an injured customer claiming you pushed her during the panic.”
Sadie stared at him.
“A man shot three people.”
“I know.”
“You’re blaming the waitress?”
“I’m telling you corporate will need an incident report.”
Dominic slowly turned toward Carl.
Frank actually stepped backward.
Carl noticed too late.
Sadie spoke first.
“It’s okay.”
Dominic looked at her.
“No.”
“Mr. Russo—”
“No.”
His voice remained calm.
That made it worse.
He faced Carl.
“She prevented a murder in your dining room.”
“Accidentally.”
Sadie closed her eyes.
Carl had chosen the worst possible word.
Dominic smiled.
There was nothing friendly in it.
“Yes.”
He nodded toward the destroyed restaurant.
“Accidentally.”
Then he looked back at Sadie.
“Get your coat.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever planned this may have seen what you just saw.”
Her breath caught.
“You think they care about me?”
Dominic’s gaze shifted toward the valet ticket in his hand.
“They will now.”
And that was how Sadie Bennett finished the worst shift of her life not with forty dollars in tips and a bus ride home—
but inside the back seat of an armored SUV belonging to Dominic Russo.
Before the vehicle pulled away, Dominic’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
No one spoke for three seconds.
Then Vincent Marconi’s voice came through.
“Dom.”
Dominic’s entire body went rigid.
“Where are you?”
A strained breath.
Then:
“Don’t trust Frank.”
The call ended.
Sadie looked toward the front passenger seat.
May you like
Frank slowly turned around.
And the gun in his hand was already pointed at Dominic.
