Chapter 2
He did not speak.
He did not shout. He did not even look at Derek at first.
His eyes went straight to the floor, to the small crumpled shape of Amelia Hayes in her white apron, hair loose around her face, a dark stain spreading across the checkered tile.
He looked at her for a long, long moment. And something in Vincent Castellano’s face changed. It was not anger.
Anger was too small a word. It was something older than anger, quieter than rage — the look of a man who had just been reminded of every promise he had ever made in his life, and every promise that had ever been broken to him, and every rule he had ever written in blood on the walls of his own house.
He finally raised his eyes to Derek Lawson. And Derek Lawson — the Moretti enforcer, the untouchable, the invincible — felt something cold and wet start down his back and heard his own voice come out suddenly very small.
“Mr. Castellano,” Derek said. “I didn’t know this was—” “Close the door, Nikki,” Vincent said quietly. Nikki closed the door. The bell jingled one last time.
Vincent asked, in a voice so soft the room had to lean in to hear it, how long she had been down.
Angela, kneeling at Amelia’s side with a folded towel pressed against the girl’s head and her hands shaking so badly the towel kept slipping, told him maybe thirty seconds.
“She’s breathing, sir. She ain’t moving, but she’s breathing.”
Vincent’s jaw moved just once. He told Tony to call Dr. Russo, not a hospital, not yet, and to bring the car around back. Every second of it, he had not once looked at Derek — and that, more than anything, was what had started to make Derek sweat.
Derek tried to laugh. It came out dry. He explained the misunderstanding, the mouthy girl, the disrespect in front of his boys.
He swore on his mother he had not known this was Vincent’s place. Vincent’s voice went soft, and Mr. Del Monaco crossed himself a second time, because every regular knew that when Vincent’s voice went soft, you did not want to be the person he was talking to.
“You didn’t know this was my place,” Vincent repeated.
“The name of this diner is painted in six-inch letters on the window behind you. It is printed on the menu in your hand. It is stitched on the apron of the woman lying at my feet.
You sat in my booth, ordered my coffee, grabbed my waitress by the wrist, and now you stand on my floor and tell me you didn’t know.”
Derek’s mouth opened and closed. Vincent took one step forward, and Derek, who outweighed him by forty pounds and was fifteen years younger, took one step back without meaning to.
Vincent sent his two men to the doors — one at the front, one at the kitchen hallway — and told Derek to sit.
Derek sat, palms flat on the table, fingers trembling, the way a man sits when he has been pulled over and is trying very hard to look like he has nothing to hide.
Vincent slid into the booth across from him, calm as a grandfather at Sunday dinner. “I have run this diner for twenty-six years.
In twenty-six years, you know how many times somebody has thrown a punch on this floor? Zero. Because of the rule. You know the rule.” “No violence in Castellano’s,” Derek said. “Say it again, son, so the whole room can hear you.”
Derek said it again, his voice cracking. “One more time.” “No violence in Castellano’s, sir.”
Vincent leaned back. “Look down at my floor, Derek. Look at the blood.”
A small, slow river of red had crept out from under Angela’s towel, dark against the white tile, spreading in a shape that looked almost like a handprint.
“That is my floor, and that is my waitress, and that is her blood. Twenty-six years, Derek, and you did it in thirty seconds.”
Derek began babbling about paying for the cleaning, paying for the doctor. Vincent leaned forward, his forearms coming down slow.
“Who do you work for?” “The Morettis, sir. Joey Moretti.” Vincent nodded almost kindly. Little Joey. He had known Joey since Joey was eight years old, bought the kid pistachio gelato down on Mulberry Street.
Joey and Vincent had an understanding, thirty years old, made in a back room on Elizabeth Street over coffee and a handshake: this diner is neutral.
Any man, any family, any side of any beef in this city can walk in here and eat his eggs in peace. “So when you walked in here and put your hand on this girl, Derek, you didn’t just break my rule.
You broke Joey’s rule, too.”
Derek went the color of skim milk. “Oh, God,” he whispered. “Mr. Castellano, please — Joey doesn’t have to hear about this.
I can make it right.
I can apologize to the girl—” “The girl is unconscious, Derek. And you don’t know how hard you hit her, do you?
A hundred-ninety-pound man with a closed fist on a hundred-ten-pound woman standing flatfooted. You didn’t think about her jaw or her neck or the tile floor behind her. You just swung. So right now, you and I don’t know if she wakes up.”
Derek’s hands were shaking so hard the table vibrated. And then, from across the diner, a small old voice: “Mr. Castellano.”
Old Mr. Del Monaco, seventy-four years old, still at his usual spot by the window, his decaf gone cold. “I’ve been coming to this diner twenty years. I am a witness.
That boy grabbed her first. That boy hit her while she had her hands folded. That girl never raised her voice and never raised a hand. I’m eyes, Mr. Castellano.”
And one by one, the other regulars murmured the same. I saw the whole thing. I’m eyes. Vincent nodded at each of them, slow and grave, the way a priest nods at a confession.
He turned back to Derek. “Eight witnesses, maybe ten. Every one of them tells the same story. So here is what happens. You walk out the back door with Mikey and Paulie.
You get in the car and you wait while Dr. Russo tells me whether that girl is going to open her eyes again. And depending on what he tells me, I will decide what kind of phone call I make to Joey Moretti tonight.”
May you like
Derek was crying now, tears running straight into his collar. “Stand up, son.” He could not. His legs would not hold him. Vincent called Mikey, who crossed the floor and hooked a hand under Derek’s armpit, almost gently, like a nurse lifting an old man out of a wheelchair, and walked him toward the back hallway.
And that was when Amelia Hayes groaned.
