Chapter 2 - A Debt Written in Blood
Damian stared at the word Maya had written across his blank check. Men had begged him for smaller fortunes. Politicians had traded principles for less. Yet a waitress facing eviction had refused enough money to escape poverty forever.
“You think I want you gone,” he said.
“I think you’re afraid of what happens if I stay.”
The SUV moved through the city, rain sliding across the tinted windows. Damian capped the silver pen carefully.
“Ricky told the Valenti family that a woman saved me after the ambush. They believe you heard something.”
“I heard you complain about chicken.”
“They won’t believe that.”
“Then tell them yourself.”
“Men like Carlo Valenti don’t accept reassurance. They remove uncertainty.”
Maya’s anger softened into unease. “You’re saying they’ll kill me.”
“I’m saying they may try.”
“And your solution is to buy my disappearance?”
“My solution is to keep you alive.”
“By taking away my job, my home, and my name?”
“Those things can be replaced.”
Maya leaned forward. “That sentence tells me everything I need to know about you.”
Damian’s jaw tightened.
The SUV entered an underground garage beneath a glass tower. Marcus escorted them to a private elevator. When the doors opened, Maya stepped into an apartment larger than Sal’s entire building.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked Manhattan. The dining table was set for two, but the place felt unlived in. There were no family photographs, no shoes near the door, no clutter indicating that a human being relaxed there.
Damian poured water instead of wine.
“You invited me to dinner,” Maya said.
“A chef prepared something.”
“I thought men like you made people taste the food first.”
“Only when I’m expecting bad company.”
She looked at him sharply.
“That was almost a joke,” he said.
“It needs work.”
Dinner was roasted chicken with saffron rice.
Maya stared at the plate.
Damian sat across from her. “I thought symmetry might appeal to you.”
“You had someone recreate my six-dollar takeout?”
“Marcus found the diner that made it.”
“Sal made it.”
“Then Sal has underestimated his talents.”
Despite herself, Maya laughed.
The sound seemed to catch Damian off guard. For one second, the feared man disappeared and someone lonelier took his place.
Then the penthouse lights went out.
Damian crossed the table before Maya understood what was happening. He pulled her to the floor as glass exploded behind them.
A suppressed bullet struck the wall where Maya’s head had been.
Damian covered her body with his.
“Stay down.”
Another bullet cut through the dining room.
Marcus and two guards entered, returning fire toward an adjacent rooftop. Alarms began screaming.
Damian pulled Maya behind a marble island. Blood darkened his shirt near the wound she had treated.
“You tore the stitches.”
“I’ll survive.”
“You keep saying that as though it’s guaranteed.”
He checked her face and arms. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
His hand remained against her cheek a second too long.
Then Marcus shouted that the shooter was retreating.
Damian stood, fury settling over his features. “Take Maya to the safe room.”
“I’m not going anywhere without an explanation,” she said.
“You just received one.”
The safe room was hidden behind a wall in Damian’s study. Marcus locked them inside while Damian’s security team searched the building.
Maya paced beneath harsh white lights.
“You knew someone might attack.”
“I suspected it.”
“And still brought me here?”
“My residence was considered secure.”
“A bullet came through your window.”
“Yes. I noticed.”
She stopped pacing. “You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
A framed photograph sat on a shelf: Damian at perhaps sixteen, standing beside a smiling woman with warm brown eyes. A younger boy stood on her other side.
“Your family?” Maya asked.
“My mother and brother.”
“Where are they?”
“My mother died when I was nineteen. My brother died three years later.”
“I’m sorry.”
“People say that when they don’t know what else to offer.”
“It doesn’t mean they don’t mean it.”
Damian studied her.
“My father built the organization,” he said. “When he died, his partners expected to divide it. I disappointed them.”
“How?”
“I survived.”
The safe-room intercom activated.
Marcus’s voice emerged. “The shooter escaped, but we found a rifle. It belongs to a Valenti contractor.”
Damian pressed the button. “Lock down the diner and Miss Ellison’s building.”
Maya stepped closer. “No armed men inside Sal’s.”
“That isn’t negotiable.”
“It is if they frighten customers.”
“You nearly died.”
“So did you.”
“I’m accustomed to it.”
“Well, I’m not.”
The door opened. Marcus entered with a grim expression.
“There’s more. Ricky Doyle disappeared from surveillance thirty minutes before the attack.”
Damian went still. “Find him.”
Marcus nodded, then hesitated. “Someone accessed the penthouse security plan using an internal clearance code.”
The danger had not come only from the Valenti family.
Someone inside Damian’s organization had helped them.
For the next week, Maya lived under guard. Sal’s Diner acquired two silent customers who drank coffee for ten hours a day and never removed their jackets. A new lock appeared on Maya’s apartment door. Her overdue rent was paid anonymously.
She knew who had done it.
She sent Damian an invoice for the exact amount.
He returned it with a handwritten note:
Consider it interest on the scarf.
Maya wrote beneath it:
I still want the scarf back.
Damian appeared at the diner that evening carrying a new cashmere scarf.
“It isn’t mine,” she said.
“The original was destroyed.”
“Then you still owe me.”
“Your accounting methods are ruthless.”
“Learned from the best.”
Their relationship developed in stolen conversations. Damian came for coffee after closing. Maya asked questions no one else dared ask. He answered some and evaded others. She learned he read history, hated jazz, slept fewer than four hours a night, and secretly funded three hospitals in neighborhoods his father had once exploited.
He learned she had abandoned nursing school after her mother became ill. Her mother survived, but the debt did too. Maya worked double shifts to pay it.
“You should return,” he told her.
“To nursing school?”
“You’re good under pressure.”
“You mean I’m good at ordering you around.”
“That too.”
One night, Damian arrived with blood on his cuff.
Maya looked at it. “Yours?”
“No.”
She stepped away.
He saw the change in her face. “Ricky was found.”
“What did you do?”
“I asked him questions.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I can give you.”
Maya folded her arms. “Do people die when you ask questions?”
“Sometimes.”
The honesty frightened her more than a lie would have.
“You can’t expect me to accept that.”
“I don’t.”
“Then why keep coming here?”
Damian looked around the empty diner.
“Because you’re the only person who remembers I was human before you learned my name.”
Maya’s anger faltered.
He placed her old scarf on the counter. It had been cleaned and repaired, though a dark stain remained in the fabric.
“I thought it was destroyed.”
“I lied.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to give you something that wasn’t covered in my blood.”
She touched the repaired edge.
“It still is.”
“Yes.”
Their eyes met.
Outside, a car slowed beside the diner. A man raised a phone and photographed them through the window.
Damian saw the flash.
He moved instantly, pulling Maya behind the counter. His guards chased the car, but it accelerated away.
Ten minutes later, Marcus called.
The photograph had already reached Damian’s enemies.
Beside it was a message:
THE DEVIL HAS A WEAKNESS.
Maya looked at Damian. “They mean me.”
May you like
“No,” he said coldly. “They mean themselves.”
But before dawn, Sal’s Diner exploded.
