Chapter 1 - THE PRICE OF KEEPING SOMEONE ALIVE
The first thing Dominic Romano did after telling me somebody wanted me dead was ask whether my apartment had a second exit.
I looked at the window above my kitchen sink. It opened onto a brick wall and a four-story drop.
“Does that count?” I asked.
He didn't smile. “Pack a bag.”
“No.”
The word surprised both of us. Three black SUVs idled outside my building, his bodyguard was guarding the stairwell, and the most dangerous man in Boston stood beside the table where I ate boxed macaroni. Yet the only thing I could think about was my mother telling me that fear made terrible decisions when you handed it the steering wheel.
Dominic's eyes settled on me. “Chloe, you heard what I said.”
“I heard you. I also heard you arrive with enough security to invade a small country. Maybe start by telling me what happened instead of telling me what to do.”
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite amusement. Respect, maybe.
“Fair,” he said.
He took a folded photograph from inside his jacket and laid it beside the untouched envelope of money. The image showed me at the restaurant, my hand wrapped around his as he struggled to breathe. It had been taken from above, probably the security camera near the chandelier.
Across the bottom somebody had written four words in black marker: SHE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO INTERFERE.
The room seemed to tilt.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was delivered to my office this afternoon.”
“By whom?”
“Someone who knew my people would intercept it. They wanted me to see it.”
I stared at the image of myself. The white apron. The desperate expression. My mother's old silver bracelet on my wrist. An ordinary second of my life, turned into a threat.
“Call the police,” I said.
“I already contacted a detective I trust. But the sender knew the exact minute the ambulance arrived. They had access to the restaurant cameras, or to somebody who did.”
“Richard,” I whispered.
Dominic nodded. “Your manager had twenty thousand dollars deposited into an account he opened last month. The morning after the poisoning, he paid off two credit cards and put a down payment on a boat.”
My anger arrived before my fear. “He fired me because somebody paid him to?”
“I don't know yet. I know he lied when my investigator questioned him.”
I looked at the fifty thousand dollars again. A number so enormous it could erase almost everything hanging over my head. Rent. Hospital bills. The interest on the credit card I had used for my mother's medication. It could buy sleep.
“And that?” I asked.
“A thank-you. Not a contract. Take it or don't.”
“Does accepting it mean I belong to your security team?”
“No.”
“Does refusing it mean you leave me alone?”
“No,” he said, and for the first time his voice grew sharp. “Someone photographed you while I was dying. Someone sent that picture as a warning. I won't pretend you're safe because it makes this conversation easier.”
Outside, a car alarm chirped. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Dominic noticed, then carefully stepped back from my kitchen table, giving me space. “I can arrange a room at a hotel under a different name. Or you can stay with someone you trust. You decide where. My people will keep watch from a distance unless you ask otherwise.”
I wanted to hate how reasonable that sounded. Instead I hated the fact that the man I had rescued from table four had become the only person giving me information.
“My friend Tessa has a couch,” I said. “She lives in Somerville.”
“Call her.”
I dialed while Dominic moved to the window. Tessa answered on the second ring, her voice bright until she heard mine.
“Chloe? What's wrong?”
“Can I stay with you for a couple of nights?”
“Of course. Did your landlord finally lose his mind?”
“Something like that.”
Tessa was a nurse who worked double shifts and collected terrible jokes. We'd met in a community college anatomy class, back when I thought I'd eventually finish a nursing degree. She asked no more questions after I promised to explain when I arrived.
I packed jeans, a sweater, my mother's photograph, and the folder containing her hospital statements. I couldn't explain why I took the folder. Maybe the thought of leaving those papers behind felt too much like abandoning her.
When I returned, Dominic was standing very still, looking at a framed picture of my mother on the shelf.
“That's Evelyn Henderson?” he asked.
I froze. “How do you know her name?”
His face changed so quickly I almost missed it. Surprise. Recognition. Then a closed door.
“I had a background check done before coming here.”
“You checked my mother?”
“I checked what could make you vulnerable.”
I took the frame from his hand. “She wasn't a vulnerability. She was my whole world.”
“I'm sorry,” he said quietly. “That came out wrong.”
It was the first apology I'd ever heard from someone people called a king.
We went downstairs together. The bodyguard from the restaurant stood near the entrance, his massive shoulders nearly blocking it.
“Miss Henderson,” he said. “I'm Michael. About the other night—”
“You thought I poisoned your boss.”
“Yes.” He swallowed. “I was wrong.”
“You grabbed me hard enough to leave bruises.”
His eyes dropped to my arm. “I know. I'm sorry.”
I wanted an apology to fix the ugliness of that moment, but it didn't. “Don't do it again.”
“It won't happen again.”
The rain had softened to mist. We were halfway to the SUVs when a delivery van coasted around the corner with its headlights off.
Michael saw it first.
“Inside,” he snapped.
Dominic caught my wrist, not painfully, just long enough to turn me toward the building. Then the van's side door slid open.
A camera flashed.
No gun. No explosion. Just a burst of white light and a man shouting, “Smile, waitress!”
Michael rushed forward as the van sped away. Dominic moved between me and the street, his expression harder than concrete.
“What was that?” I demanded.
“A message,” he said.
I looked up at my own building. Behind a second-floor curtain, my elderly neighbor Mrs. Alvarez watched with a hand over her mouth. The danger wasn't staying neatly inside some gangster's world. It had driven right up to the home where I had lived for six years.
I climbed into the middle SUV because, all at once, Tessa's couch sounded like the most beautiful piece of furniture in Massachusetts.
During the drive, Dominic sat across from me, one hand pressed against his ribs. He was still pale under the streetlights.
“Should you even be out of the hospital?” I asked.
“My doctors cleared me.”
“Your doctors probably didn't know you'd be playing action hero in the rain.”
“They know I'm stubborn.”
“Well, they weren't wrong.”
He exhaled a laugh, then winced. I noticed his fingers trembling and thought about the blood coming from his nose at table four. The way his eyes had searched mine. Nobody looks powerful when they are begging their lungs to work.
“Do you know who did it?” I asked.
“I know someone put a substance in my drink. I know there was a meeting scheduled for that night, one I canceled at the last minute. And I know the man who chose that restaurant was my younger brother.”
“Your brother?”
“Luca.” Dominic looked out at the passing storefronts. “He's made mistakes. I don't know if this was one of them.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because you asked for the truth.”
That answer bothered me less than I expected.
At Tessa's building, Dominic remained in the car while Michael walked me to the door. I refused the money again. Dominic didn't argue; he only asked whether I'd keep his number in my phone.
“I don't need a mysterious guardian angel,” I said.
“Good. I'm a terrible candidate.”
I almost smiled.
Tessa opened her door in pink scrubs and fuzzy slippers. She looked from Michael to the SUVs and back to me.
“Chloe,” she said slowly, “what kind of trouble have you brought to my hallway?”
“Apparently the expensive kind.”
We stayed awake until two in the morning. I told her everything except the name of the suspected poison, because Dominic hadn't told me that and I wasn't going to invent an answer. Tessa listened, made me tea, and said the kind of thing real friends say when you're terrified.
“You did the right thing. That doesn't mean the world rewards you for it. It just means you can live with yourself.”
At 6:12 A.M., my phone rang from an unknown number.
I answered before thinking.
“Chloe Henderson?” said a woman's voice, low and hurried. “My name is Detective Mara Ellis. I need to speak with you about the Romano case.”
I sat up. “Did Dominic send you?”
“No. And you need to understand something before he does.”
A door slammed somewhere behind her.
“Your mother's death certificate,” she said. “Did anyone ever tell you why the hospital amended it three months after she died?”
My breathing stopped.
“My mother had cancer.”
“I know what the first certificate says.”
Tessa was watching me from the couch, her expression suddenly frightened.
Detective Ellis lowered her voice to a whisper.
“The second certificate has been sealed. And last night, someone accessed the file using the same security credentials that were used to erase the footage from table four.”
I looked at the folder lying beside my overnight bag.
For the first time since Dominic Romano had knocked on my door, I understood that this nightmare might not have started at the restaurant.
May you like
It might have started with my mother.
END OF CHAPTER 1
