Chapter 1 - Dante looked out the window.
“Yes.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow.
Interesting.
The following Thursday, Scarlett approached the corner booth carrying an envelope.
Dante looked at it.
“What is that?”
“Money.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what it’s for.”
“The shirt.”
She stopped.
“How did you know?”
“You have looked guilty every time you passed this table for ten minutes.”
Scarlett sat the envelope beside his bread.
“I checked the label before Rosa sent it to the cleaner.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“That sounds invasive.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t search the pockets.”
That almost-smile appeared again.
Scarlett pushed the envelope closer.
“I can’t afford the full amount, but this is what I saved from tips.”
Dante stared at her.
She was serious.
A waitress who had probably spent the week counting rent money was offering him every dollar she could spare because she had stained a shirt he had forgotten about ten minutes after leaving the restaurant.
Something tightened painfully beneath his ribs.
“Keep it.”
“Dante—”
She stopped.
It was the first time she had called him anything.
She didn’t know his name.
He noticed.
“So we’re still doing the mysterious-stranger thing?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Mysterious stranger, take the envelope.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I said no.”
“That argument probably works frighteningly well for you.”
“It usually does.”
“Well, it doesn’t work on me.”
Their eyes held.
Dante should have been irritated.
Instead, he found himself fascinated.
“Keep the money, Scarlett.”
Her expression changed.
“How do you know my name?”
He had made a mistake.
A small one.
Dante Moretti did not make small mistakes.
He certainly did not make them because a woman smelled faintly of vanilla and had a loose strand of dark hair against her cheek.
“Rosa said it.”
“No, she didn’t.”
Dante said nothing.
Scarlett studied him.
Then she slowly took back the envelope.
“You are very strange.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“I doubt anyone tells you much.”
That time, he did smile.
Barely.
But Scarlett saw it.
She walked into the kitchen grinning.
Dante sat motionless afterward, annoyed by how much he wanted her to come back.
That was how it began.
Not with seduction.
Not with plans.
With Thursdays.
Scarlett learned he drank coffee black.
Dante learned she hated olives but pretended not to because Rosa put them in everything.
Scarlett learned he read history books.
Dante learned she wanted to open a small neighborhood catering business one day but was terrified of borrowing money.
He began arriving earlier.
She started saving his table even when Rosa said nobody would dare take it anyway.
Then Ethan Cole appeared.
Ethan was twenty-six, a new bartender with an easy smile, excellent hair, and the irritating confidence of a man who had never been responsible for anything more serious than his gym membership.
He liked Scarlett immediately.
Dante noticed immediately.
One Thursday, Ethan leaned close while Scarlett was entering an order.
She laughed.
Dante’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth.
Five minutes later Ethan placed a hand against Scarlett’s lower back while passing behind her.
Dante put down his spoon.
Marcus, waiting outside, received a text.
Find out who the bartender is.
Marcus replied almost instantly.
Problem?
Dante stared across the restaurant.
No.
After ten seconds, another message followed.
Just find out.
Marcus smiled in the SUV.
The following week Dante came forty minutes early.
Scarlett looked genuinely surprised.
“You know Thursday dinner doesn’t start earlier because you glared at the clock, right?”
“I was hungry.”
“You eat the same soup every week.”
“I like consistency.”
Ethan entered through the kitchen twenty minutes later.
His face brightened when he saw Scarlett.
Dante’s jaw tightened.
When Scarlett brought his bread, he asked casually, “The bartender.”
“What about him?”
“How long has he worked here?”
“Two weeks.”
“He seems comfortable.”
Scarlett stared at him.
Then understanding appeared in her eyes.
“Oh.”
Dante hated the little smile forming on her mouth.
“Oh what?”
“Nothing.”
“Scarlett.”
She leaned closer.
“Are you jealous?”
“No.”
“You answered extremely fast.”
“I am observant.”
“You’re jealous.”
“I have no reason to be jealous.”
“Exactly.”
She walked away smiling.
Dante sat staring at his soup.
For the first time in years, he felt ridiculous.
And alive.
A few nights later, rain hammered Chicago hard enough to empty the restaurant early.
At nine-thirty only Dante remained.
Scarlett carried two almond cookies to his booth.
“I didn’t order those.”
“Rosa says you look sad.”
Dante looked toward the kitchen.
“Rosa should concentrate on cooking.”
“She also says you’re too thin.”
“I’m six foot two and two hundred pounds.”
“I didn’t say Rosa was rational.”
Scarlett hesitated.
“Can I sit down?”
He gestured to the opposite seat.
She slipped off one shoe beneath the table and sighed.
“My feet hate me.”
“You should buy better shoes.”
“You should tip better.”
Dante looked at her.
Scarlett laughed.
“I’m kidding. You tip like you’re laundering money.”
The silence that followed was just long enough to make Scarlett blink.
Dante slowly lifted his coffee.
She pointed at him.
“That pause was suspicious.”
“You talk too much.”
“You talk too little. Between us, we average normal.”
He looked toward the rain.
“So why do you come here every Thursday?” she asked.
Dante considered lying.
Instead, he said, “It is quiet.”
“There are children throwing bread every ten minutes.”
“Quieter than my life.”
That answer changed the air between them.
Scarlett’s expression softened.
“You have a complicated life.”
“Yes.”
“Family?”
He stared into his coffee.
“I had a son.”
Had.
Scarlett noticed the tense.
She did not ask.
Dante noticed that too.
After a while she said, “My grandmother used to tell me grief is love with nowhere to go.”
His eyes lifted.
“That sounds uncomfortable.”
“She was Italian. Everything she said sounded uncomfortable.”
He almost laughed.
They sat until Rosa shut down the kitchen.
At the door, Scarlett pulled on her coat.
A cheap coat.
Too thin for Chicago in November.
Dante looked at it with visible disapproval.
“What?”
“That isn’t a coat.”
“It has sleeves.”
“That does not make it a coat.”
“Good night, mysterious stranger.”
“Dante.”
Scarlett stopped.
He surprised himself as much as her.
“My name is Dante.”
She smiled slowly.
“Scarlett.”
“I know.”
She laughed.
“That part is still creepy.”
He watched her walk into the rain.
Then he turned toward Marcus.
“Find out her coat size.”
Marcus stared at him.
“No.”
Dante stared back.
Marcus sighed.
“I cannot believe this is what my career has become.”
Three days later, Scarlett found a dark-green wool coat hanging in the employee room.
No card.
No receipt.
Exactly her size.
She wore it Thursday.
Dante pretended not to notice.
Scarlett walked straight to his table.
“This is too expensive.”
“It is cold.”
“You bought me a coat.”
“You needed one.”
“You cannot solve every problem by quietly throwing money at it.”
“I disagree.”
She folded her arms.
He looked at her in the green coat.
It matched her eyes perfectly.
Scarlett’s expression softened.
“Thank you.”
Dante nodded.
She turned away.
And for the first time in three years, Dante Moretti caught himself imagining what it would feel like to put his arms around a woman.
The realization terrified him more than any enemy ever had.
Dante should have walked away then.
Instead, he began protecting Scarlett before she even knew she needed protection.
The Moretti organization had spent decades balancing legitimacy and darkness.
On paper, Dante owned warehouses, parking structures, construction companies, freight businesses, and several blocks of commercial real estate.
Off paper, there were arrangements nobody discussed.
Dante had spent the last ten years pushing more of his empire toward legitimate business.
Some men admired him for it.
Others considered it weakness.
Victor Bellini was one of them.
Bellini controlled a smaller but increasingly aggressive crew on Chicago’s south side. For months his people had been testing Dante’s boundaries.
A vandalized warehouse.
A disrupted delivery.
A contractor suddenly changing allegiance.
Dante handled each challenge quietly.
Then Marcus placed six photographs on his desk.
Dante’s blood turned cold.
Scarlett leaving Vita Vecchia.
Scarlett buying coffee.
Scarlett unlocking her apartment building.
Scarlett laughing with Rosa outside the bakery next door.
Dante touched none of the photographs.
“How long?”
“Three days.”
“Bellini?”
“We believe so.”
“Believe?”
Marcus straightened.
“Bellini.”
Dante looked again.
It was the old fear.
The fear he had sworn never to permit himself again.
When Michael died, Dante had decided attachment was a liability life would eventually collect.
Then Scarlett walked into a restaurant carrying a tray of wine.
“Put two people on the restaurant,” Dante said.
“Already done.”
“Her apartment?”
“One across the street.”
“Make it two.”
Marcus hesitated.
“Does she know?”
“No.”
“Dante.”
That was Marcus speaking as a friend, not an employee.
“She should.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
“I’ll tell her.”
He went to Vita Vecchia that afternoon.
Scarlett was stacking glasses behind the bar.
She looked at the clock.
“It’s Wednesday.”
“I am aware.”
“This feels serious.”
“It is.”
She put down the glass.
Dante sat at the bar.
“There are people who dislike me.”
“That is the least surprising thing you have ever told me.”
He did not smile.
Scarlett’s humor disappeared.
“What happened?”
“Some of them have noticed you.”
She stared.
“Why would they notice me?”
Dante looked directly at her.
“Because I did.”
For several seconds the restaurant seemed very quiet.
Scarlett lowered herself onto the stool opposite him.
“You’re saying I’m in danger.”
“I am saying I will not allow anything to happen to you.”
“Those aren’t the same sentence.”
“No.”
“Who are you, Dante?”
He had known the question was coming.
He still hated hearing it.
“What do you think?”
“I think Rosa is afraid of your name. I think men wait outside for you. I think you can make plumbers appear for free and somehow know when my radiator stops working.”
His expression changed.
“That was you?”
He ignored the question.
She leaned closer.
“And I think you’ve spent months letting me believe you were just some rich, lonely businessman.”
“I never said I was just anything.”
“That is lawyer-level nonsense.”
Dante looked down at his hands.
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.
“My life includes people I would never ask you to meet. Decisions I would never ask you to make. Things I am not proud of.”
“Are you in the mob?”
Dante met her eyes.
Scarlett inhaled slowly.
“Wow.”
He said nothing.
She stood.
May you like
Walked two steps.
Turned around.
