Chapter 1
Rain came down in sheets, washing the grime of the city into the gutters, but it could not wash the blood from Dominic’s hands.
He was finished with the night. Finished with the noise.
Then a boy no older than 10 tugged at his expensive cashmere coat.
“Sir, my sister is crying in the alley.”
Dominic should have kept walking.
He did not.
He stood beneath the awning outside the club, breathing in the damp, metallic air of the city. Rain slicked the sidewalks and reflected the neon signs behind him. The meeting inside had gone badly. 2 men were currently bleeding on a velvet sofa, and Dominic was exhausted.
Tonight, he did not feel like the head of the Rossi family.
He simply felt heavy.
He lit a cigarette. The brief flare of the match illuminated the hard lines of his face.
His bodyguard, Paulie, stood 3 paces behind him, an immovable wall of muscle wrapped in cheap polyester.
“Get the car,” Dominic murmured.
Before Paulie could reach for his radio, something tugged at Dominic’s coat.
Paulie reacted immediately, one large hand moving toward the perceived threat.
Dominic raised 1 finger.
Paulie stopped.
Dominic looked down.
A boy stood beside him.
He could not have been older than 10. His sneakers were soaked and peeling at the soles. A thin windbreaker offered almost no protection from the November cold. He was shivering so violently that his teeth clicked together.
But his eyes remained fixed on Dominic.
They were wide and frantic, without any of the fear or respect people normally showed the head of the Rossi family.
“Sir,” the boy gasped. “My sister is crying in the alley.”
Dominic stared at him while ash lengthened at the end of his cigarette.
Normally, he would have given a child like this $50 and continued walking.
The city was full of desperate children and crying women. A man could not save all of them. Trying only meant allowing them to pull him into the same darkness.
“Call a cop, kid.”
Dominic turned toward the street.
The boy did not release his coat.
Instead, his grip tightened.
“The cops won’t come down there. The man—he has a knife. He says she owes him. Please.”
Dominic stopped.
He looked at the small hand gripping his pristine coat.
Then he looked across the street.
The alley was a narrow strip of darkness between a shuttered adult shop and a decaying apartment building.
He did not know exactly why he started walking.
Perhaps the adrenaline from the meeting was still moving through him.
Perhaps it was the boy’s eyes.
“Wait by the car, Paulie,” Dominic ordered, flicking the cigarette into a puddle.
“Boss, it’s not safe.”
“Wait.”
Dominic crossed the street.
The boy hurried after him, almost running to keep pace with Dominic’s long strides.
Inside the alley, the sounds of the city faded until there was only water dripping from rusted fire escapes.
Then Dominic heard a woman’s voice.
“I told you I need until Friday. I get paid on Friday.”
The voice was tight with panic but carried an unmistakable edge of anger.
“Your old man said that 3 weeks ago, Chloe,” a man replied. “Varga is out of patience. You’re coming with me, and we’re going to figure out how you’re going to work this off.”
Dominic rounded a dumpster.
A young woman stood with her back against a wet brick wall. Her clothes were soaked, her brown hair plastered against her cheeks. She breathed rapidly, both hands clenched into fists.
A man in a cheap leather jacket stood in front of her.
A switchblade gleamed in his hand.
“Hey.”
Dominic did not raise his voice.
He did not need to.
The man turned.
“Get lost, buddy. Private business.”
Dominic continued walking toward him.
“You drop Varga’s name out in the open like that, you make him sound cheap.”
The man squinted into the darkness.
“Is he cheap?”
Streetlight finally illuminated Dominic’s face.
The man’s posture changed.
He saw the expression, the tailored suit, the complete absence of fear.
He stepped back.
“Who the hell are you?”
Dominic said nothing.
He continued until he was within reach.
The man lifted his knife.
“I said stay back.”
Dominic moved.
His left hand closed around the man’s wrist.
He squeezed.
Bone ground against bone.
The man screamed, his fingers opening involuntarily.
The switchblade struck the pavement.
Dominic drove his other fist into the man’s stomach beneath the ribs.
The air left him.
As he folded forward, Dominic drove a knee into his face.
Cartilage cracked.
The man collapsed among the garbage bags.
Unconscious.
Dominic calmly straightened his cuffs.
Then he looked at the woman.
Chloe stared back at him.
She did not look relieved.
She looked as though one predator had been replaced by another.
The boy ran past Dominic and wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Sam.”
Chloe dropped to her knees and held him.
“Are you okay? I told you to run home.”
“I found him,” Sam said, pointing toward Dominic. “He beat the bad guy up.”
Chloe looked up.
Her eyes were intelligent, sharp and exhausted. A bruise was beginning to form along her jaw.
“Thank you.”
She drew Sam closer.
“We don’t have any money to give you.”
Dominic gave a short, cynical breath that almost resembled laughter.
“I don’t want your money.”
He looked at the unconscious man.
Varga’s people were becoming sloppy, collecting pennies in the rain.
Dominic turned away.
He had done enough.
“Wait.”
He stopped.
Chloe helped Sam to his feet.
“He’ll come back. They know where we live.”
Dominic looked over his shoulder.
“If you have the kind of power to put someone like that down without blinking…”
Chloe swallowed.
“Please. I just need somewhere safe for my brother tonight.”
Dominic studied her.
The desperation in her voice brought back memories he had spent most of his life trying to bury.
“My car is out front,” he said. “Don’t make me wait.”
The diner sat near the warehouse district, an old neon-lit place serving burnt coffee to customers nobody asked questions about.
Dominic sat in a vinyl booth with black coffee in front of him.
Across the table, Sam was destroying a stack of pancakes beneath a flood of artificial syrup.
Chloe sat beside him.
Her tea had gone cold.
She had not touched the food Dominic had ordered.
Instead, she watched him.
“Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
It was an obvious lie.
Her stomach had already growled twice.
Dominic finally looked at her.
Under the fluorescent lights, she appeared even more exhausted than she had in the alley. Dark circles marked the skin beneath her eyes. Her clothes were inexpensive but clean and carefully repaired.
“You don’t eat, you pass out. You pass out, I leave you here.”
Chloe’s jaw tightened.
She picked up her fork and forced herself to eat.
Dominic leaned back.
“Varga. Why does a man who runs half the illegal gambling in this city care about you?”
Chloe put down her fork.
“Not me. My father.”
She wrapped both hands around the tea.
“He had a problem. Cards, dogs. If it had numbers on it, he bet on it.”
Dominic noticed the past tense.
“He died last month. Liver gave out.”
There was almost no grief in her voice.
“Turns out death doesn’t erase a ledger. They came to my apartment a week after the funeral. Said he owed $40,000. Said I inherited the debt.”
“You don’t inherit debt.”
“Tell that to the man you left bleeding in the garbage.”
For a moment, Dominic almost smiled.
There was anger in her.
He respected it.
“$40,000 is pocket change for Varga,” he said. “But he’s a man of principle. He’ll squeeze you simply to prove he can. How were you planning to pay?”
“I have 2 jobs. I was going to negotiate a payment plan.”
Dominic laughed.
“A payment plan with a loan shark?”
Chloe’s face reddened.
“You’d pay interest for the rest of your life and never touch the principal. You’re an idiot.”
“I’m doing the best I can.”
Her voice hardened.
“I have a 10-year-old brother to keep out of foster care. I don’t have the luxury of being smart. I just have to survive.”
Sam stopped eating.
Dominic looked at him.
Then back at Chloe.
He could walk away.
He had bought them food. He had saved her from the knife.
They owed each other nothing.
But Dominic knew Varga.
By the following night, Chloe would probably be dragged into a warehouse or forced into one of Varga’s clubs to work off the debt.
Sam would be left alone.
Cold.
Angry.
Exactly where Dominic himself had once been.
“I’ll buy the debt.”
Chloe stared at him.
“What?”
“I’ll pay Varga the $40,000. Clear the ledger. He won’t bother you again.”
Suspicion immediately replaced surprise.
“Why? You don’t even know me. What do you want?”
“You owe me instead.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“I don’t do charity. You owe me $40,000. My interest rate is 0, and my terms are simple.”
“What terms?”
“You work for me.”
Chloe remained silent.
“I run a restaurant downtown. Laura. High-end. Legitimate. You handle the books, manage the floor, do whatever needs doing. Part of your paycheck goes toward the debt every week until we’re clear.”
He paused.
“You get a safe apartment in one of my buildings. The kid goes to a real school.”
Chloe stared at him.
The tailored suit.
The bodyguards outside.
The black SUV.
The quiet violence.
“You’re in the mob.”
“I’m a businessman.”
“I know what you are.”
“I’m offering you a job. You can say no. Walk out that door and negotiate your payment plan with Varga’s people.”
Chloe looked at Sam.
He was scraping syrup from his plate, unaware that his sister was deciding the course of their lives.
“If I do this, you leave him out of it completely.”
“Done.”
“And when the debt is paid, I walk.”
“You walk.”
Chloe closed her eyes.
There was no real choice.
“I’ll work for you.”
Dominic slid a napkin and a silver pen across the table.
“Write down your address. My men will move your things tomorrow.”
As Chloe wrote, her hand trembled.
Dominic watched her.
He had purchased a debt.
Looking at her, he was beginning to suspect that he had also purchased a complication he could not afford.
3 months later, Laura had become Chloe’s prison.
The restaurant was a carefully designed world of brass, dark mahogany and subdued lighting. Politicians, celebrities and quietly powerful people competed for reservations.
To the public, it was one of the city’s finest Italian restaurants.
To Dominic, it was also a legitimate front through which money could be cleaned.
Chloe stood at the maître d’ station wearing a black dress Dominic had effectively ordered her to purchase with company money.
She hated it.
It fit too well and cost too much.
It made her feel owned.
“Table 4 needs another bottle of Barolo,” she told a waiter.
She had proven unnervingly good at the job.
Within weeks, Chloe had reorganized the back-office accounts and found inefficiencies Dominic’s previous managers had overlooked for years.
But the tension was exhausting her.
Dominic was always there.
He did not hover.
He simply occupied his elevated corner booth with a glass of scotch, conducting quiet meetings with men who wore expensive shoes and carried evidence of old violence on their faces.
And he watched her.
He never touched her.
Never crossed an obvious boundary.
But she could feel his attention whenever she moved through the restaurant.
It was no longer entirely fear.
That was the problem.
It felt like gravity.
“You look tired.”
Chloe turned sharply.
Dominic stood beside her.
“I’m fine, Mr. Rossi.”
She refused to call him Dominic.
“You were here until 2:00 a.m. going through supplier invoices.”
“I wanted them balanced before the weekend. Is there a problem with my work?”
“The work is perfect.”
He leaned against the podium.
“You’re working too hard. Go home. Sam has a soccer game tomorrow morning.”
Chloe stopped.
She had never told him.
Of course, Dominic knew.
His men drove Sam to school.
His men watched their apartment.
He knew everything.
“I’ll leave when the dinner rush is over.”
“Suit yourself.”
Dominic returned to his booth.
Chloe exhaled.
She hated the life he had forced her into.
She also could not deny the safety it had given Sam.
The boy was eating properly.
He attended a good school.
He was happy.
Then the front doors opened.
4 men entered.
The restaurant seemed to change around them.
The leader was older, with slicked-back gray hair and a face marked by old violence.
Carmine Varga.
Chloe felt the blood leave her face.
Varga approached the maître d’ stand and looked her over.
“Well, well. Look at you all cleaned up.”
He smiled.
“Rossi puts a nice polish on his property, doesn’t he?”
Chloe forced herself upright.
“Do you have a reservation, sir?”
Varga laughed.
“Tell Rossi I’m here. We have business.”
“Mr. Rossi is currently unavailable. If you’d like to leave a message—”
Varga grabbed her wrist.
“Listen to me, sweetheart. I don’t leave messages. And I don’t take lip from a deadbeat’s daughter.”
A shadow fell across them.
Dominic was suddenly beside Varga.
“Let go of my manager, Carmine.”
His voice was quiet.
Varga slowly released Chloe.
“Dominic. Just having a friendly chat.”
“She’s doing her job.”
Dominic stepped between them.
“Which is keeping the trash out of my restaurant.”
His eyes settled on Varga.
“What do you want, Carmine? You don’t come into my territory unless you’re looking to bleed.”
Varga’s smile disappeared.
May you like
“You bought her debt. That was the deal. But you’ve been expanding distribution into the Southside. That’s my territory. Pull back, or the peace treaty goes up in smoke.”
“My trucks go where they want.”
