Chapter 1 - The Woman Who Made Dominic Castelli Kneel
Riley Hayes slammed Dominic Castelli against the steel table and whispered:
“Tell them to put the guns down.”
When the most feared man on the South Side looked up, he saw her father’s old butcher scale beside Riley’s hand.
A fresh scratch had been carved beneath its brass plate.
D.C.
Dominic stopped fighting.
Those were his father’s initials.
For one long second, nobody moved.
The refrigeration units hummed behind them.
Dominic’s cheek rested inches above polished stainless steel. Riley had his right arm twisted behind his back, her hip braced against him, and the narrow boning knife in her other hand rested against the tattooed side of his neck.
She wasn’t shaking.
That was what bothered him most.
Dominic Castelli had spent fifteen years learning the different ways people behaved when they were afraid of him. Some talked too much. Some stopped talking entirely. Some tried to become useful. Others tried to become invisible.
Riley Hayes did none of those things.
She was angry.
Not reckless anger.
Not panic.
The clean, steady anger of someone who had decided that whatever happened next would happen on her terms.
Behind them, Marco Bellini and Luis Ortega had their hands inside their jackets.
Riley felt Dominic’s breathing change.
“Tell them,” she said.
Dominic stared at the old scale.
“Do it.”
Marco hesitated.
The blade pressed slightly closer.
Dominic’s voice hardened.
“Now.”
Two pistols struck the tile floor.
Riley waited.
“Kick them toward the door.”
Marco’s jaw tightened.
Dominic glanced at him.
That was enough.
Both weapons scraped across the floor.
Only then did Riley ease the knife a fraction away.
“You’re making a mistake,” Marco said.
Riley looked at him.
“No. Tony made a mistake.”
Dominic almost smiled.
Almost.
“Riley.”
It was the first time he had used her name.
She noticed.
“Let me stand.”
“So your friends can shoot me?”
“If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have walked through your front door.”
“You walked through my front door with two armed men.”
“Fair point.”
Riley’s eyes narrowed.
That was not the response she expected.
Neither was what he did next.
Nothing.
Dominic didn’t threaten her.
He didn’t jerk against her grip.
He waited.
Eventually Riley stepped backward.
Dominic straightened slowly.
He adjusted his black jacket.
A faint red mark remained where the knife had touched his neck.
Marco reached toward the gun on the floor.
“Leave it,” Dominic said.
Marco stared at him.
“Boss—”
“I said leave it.”
Riley placed the knife on the counter but kept her hand beside it.
Dominic turned toward her father’s scale.
“Where did you get that?”
She gave him an incredulous look.
“This is a butcher shop.”
“The scale.”
“My father.”
“Ethan Hayes?”
The name landed differently.
Riley’s expression changed.
“You knew my father?”
Dominic stepped closer to the scale.
Ethan Hayes had been dead six years.
Heart attack, according to the hospital.
He had been fifty-eight.
Riley still remembered him teaching her how to sharpen a knife without destroying the edge. How to judge meat with her fingertips. How to remember every customer’s name because people came back to places where they felt remembered.
She also remembered the bills he had left.
The mysterious debts.
The envelopes he sometimes burned behind the shop.
Things Riley had spent six years trying not to think about.
Dominic ran his thumb near the scratched initials.
D.C.
His father had been Daniel Castelli.
Dead eleven years.
“What is it?” Riley asked.
Dominic didn’t answer.
He crouched.
Riley immediately reached for her knife again.
Dominic raised one hand.
“I’m looking underneath.”
He examined the wooden base.
Then he found something.
A tiny brass latch.
Riley stared.
She had cleaned that scale thousands of times.
Dominic pressed it.
Click.
A narrow compartment opened beneath the base.
Nobody spoke.
Inside was a key.
Old.
Blackened with age.
A strip of paper had been wrapped around it.
Dominic removed it.
Riley reached out.
“Give me that.”
He did.
That surprised her too.
She unfolded the paper.
Three words.
SAINT AGNES. 214.
Riley looked up.
“What is Saint Agnes?”
Dominic’s face had gone still.
Marco spoke behind him.
“Boss.”
Dominic ignored him.
“Saint Agnes Hospital closed eighteen years ago.”
“And?”
“My father died there.”
Riley stared at him.
“You said your father was—”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Dominic took the paper again.
His quiet eyes changed.
He was calculating.
Connecting years.
Names.
Deaths.
Tony.
Riley.
Her father.
His father.
“Tony touched this scale?” Dominic asked.
“That’s why I broke his knee.”
“Did he search anything?”
“He put his hand on it.”
“Before that.”
Riley thought back.
Tony had arrived at 7:40 p.m.
He had demanded more money.
He had insulted her.
But before the argument, she remembered him wandering toward the rear counter.
He had asked whether the shop had always belonged to her family.
At the time, she had thought he was making conversation.
Now—
“He asked when my father bought the place.”
Dominic looked at Marco.
“Who sent Tony here?”
“You did,” Riley said.
“No.”
Silence.
Riley’s stomach tightened.
Dominic turned to her.
“The collection adjustment was thirty percent. Tony demanded forty.”
“So?”
“So I never authorized it.”
Marco cursed quietly.
Dominic continued.
“Tony wasn’t collecting.”
Riley looked toward the scale.
“He was looking for something.”
Dominic nodded.
The room suddenly felt smaller.
Riley crossed her arms.
“Then ask him.”
“He’s in surgery.”
“I didn’t hit him that hard.”
Marco made a sound that might have been a laugh.
Dominic shot him a look.
It vanished.
Then headlights swept across the shop windows.
All four of them turned.
A black sedan had stopped outside.
Another pulled in behind it.
Dominic’s entire posture changed.
“Are those yours?” Riley asked.
“No.”
Three men stepped from the first vehicle.
Two from the second.
Dominic looked at the guns on the floor.
“Marco.”
Marco retrieved them.
Riley grabbed her knife.
Dominic turned toward her.
“Back exit?”
“Kitchen.”
“Alarm?”
“Silent button under the register.”
“Don’t touch it.”
“Why?”
“Because if those men belong to who I think they belong to, the police dispatcher may already be compromised.”
Riley stared at him.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
The first man outside tried the locked door.
Dominic moved beside the window but remained out of sight.
“Lights.”
Riley switched them off.
Darkness swallowed the shop.
Outside, someone knocked.
Three times.
Pause.
Twice.
Dominic’s face tightened.
“You recognize that?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
He looked at Riley.
“My uncle’s men.”
Riley’s grip tightened around the knife.
“What does your uncle want?”
Dominic looked toward the hidden compartment.
“The same thing Tony wanted.”
A metallic sound came from the rear of the building.
Not the front.
The kitchen.
Riley turned.
May you like
Someone was already inside.
Then her father’s old office door slowly began to open...
