Chapter 1 - The Man on the Floor
Sadi Moreno twisted the stranger’s wrist and drove him onto the marble floor.
“Don’t touch me!”
Gabriel Falcone looked down and noticed a silver cufflink beside the broken wineglass.
Three tiny letters were engraved inside it.
G.F.H.
Gabriel stopped smiling.
For half a second, nobody inside the private dining room moved.
Then everything happened at once.
The man Sadi had thrown to the floor cursed and tried to roll onto one knee. Two men near the windows reached inside their suit jackets. A woman in a dark green evening dress dropped her champagne glass. Someone near the doorway shouted for security.
Sadi stood perfectly still.
Her pulse hammered so violently that she could feel it in her throat.
She had worked at Belladonna for fourteen months. She had carried plates for politicians, businessmen, athletes, judges, and men whose names never appeared in newspapers but somehow caused other people to lower their voices.
She had learned one rule quickly.
Do not become memorable.
She had broken that rule in less than five seconds.
The attacker had grabbed her because she had stepped between him and a younger server named Lucia. He had been drunk enough to believe the entire room belonged to him.
“Move,” he had told Sadi.
When she refused, he squeezed her wrist.
Then he made the mistake of pulling.
Sadi’s late father had taught her enough about balance to know that a bigger man could be dangerous until he gave away his weight.
The stranger had given her all of it.
So she turned.
Dropped her center.
Redirected his arm.
And suddenly an expensive man in a five-thousand-dollar suit was lying beside a spilled bottle of Barolo.
Sadi had expected outrage.
Instead, Gabriel Falcone had smiled.
It had not been a friendly smile.
It had been smaller than that.
More curious.
He sat in a burgundy leather chair at the head of the table, dressed entirely in black, cigar resting between tattooed fingers. He looked less like a man attending dinner than a man quietly presiding over a verdict.
“Nobody touches her again,” Gabriel said.
The attacker froze.
So did everyone else.
Sadi swallowed.
“Mr. Falcone, I—”
The kitchen door opened.
A waiter stepped through.
Sadi recognized the uniform.
She did not recognize the face.
The man’s right hand was hidden beneath a folded white cloth.
Gabriel’s eyes shifted toward him.
The smile vanished.
“Down.”
The word had barely left Gabriel’s mouth when the first gunshot cracked across the room.
Guests screamed.
Sadi dropped automatically.
The bullet tore into the wall behind Gabriel.
The second shot hit him.
His body jerked sideways.
The cigar fell from his fingers.
Blood appeared across his left shoulder almost instantly.
Three of Gabriel’s men fired toward the kitchen.
The fake waiter disappeared backward through the swinging door.
Someone overturned a table.
Someone else shouted, “Lock the building!”
Sadi crawled toward Gabriel.
She did not think about it.
She simply moved.
Gabriel had fallen beside his chair.
His right hand pressed against his shoulder.
Blood pushed between his fingers.
“Don’t,” one of his guards barked when Sadi came closer.
“He’s bleeding too fast.”
“I said back away.”
Sadi looked up.
The guard was holding a gun.
She looked back down at Gabriel.
His face had gone pale.
His breathing was still controlled, but his eyes had lost focus for an instant.
“Put pressure here,” Sadi said.
The guard stared at her.
“What?”
“Unless you want him unconscious before the ambulance arrives.”
Gabriel opened his eyes fully.
Even injured, there was something unnerving about the way he looked at people.
“You know what you’re doing?” he asked.
“A little.”
That was not entirely true.
Sadi knew more than a little.
Her mother had been a nurse. Her father had worked maintenance at a community gym and taught self-defense classes at night. Sadi had grown up around bandages, bruises, broken fingers, and men who believed toughness made them immortal.
Her mother had taught her that bleeding did not care who you were.
Sadi tore a clean linen napkin from the nearest table and pressed it firmly against Gabriel’s shoulder.
He sucked in a breath.
“Sorry.”
“You’re not.”
“No.”
Another almost-smile touched his face.
Then his eyes shifted toward something on the floor.
The cufflink.
The one that had fallen from the man Sadi threw.
Gabriel pointed.
“Bring that.”
One of his guards picked it up.
Gabriel studied the engraving.
G.F.H.
Something changed in his expression.
Sadi noticed because she was close enough to see it.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“Who was that man?” Gabriel asked.
The attacker, now restrained by two guards, spit blood from a cut lip.
“Go to hell.”
Gabriel continued looking at the cufflink.
“Search him.”
They did.
Wallet.
Phone.
Keys.
Nothing else.
“No identification,” one guard said.
Gabriel’s gaze sharpened.
“Then he didn’t come here to drink.”
Sadi looked toward the kitchen.
The shooting had stopped.
Sirens were approaching.
Gabriel suddenly gripped her wrist.
Not violently.
Urgently.
“You saw the waiter?”
“Yes.”
“His face?”
“For maybe two seconds.”
“Remember it.”
“I will.”
His grip loosened.
Then his head dropped back against the chair.
“Gabriel?”
His eyes closed.
The room erupted again.
Paramedics arrived minutes later, escorted by men who looked far too heavily armed to be restaurant security.
Sadi expected the police.
Very few came.
She expected questions.
Nobody asked her anything.
Gabriel was taken out through a private entrance.
The attacker disappeared through another.
Belladonna closed before ten.
At ten forty-three, Sadi was still there cleaning blood.
She had been told she could leave.
She had not.
Lucia was crying in the employee room. The manager was shaking so badly he could barely unlock the liquor storage.
Sadi found work because work gave her hands something to do.
She picked up glass.
Mopped wine.
Scrubbed blood.
It was almost midnight when two black SUVs pulled behind the restaurant.
A man named Enzo Rinaldi entered.
Sadi knew him only by sight.
Everyone did.
He was Gabriel’s closest adviser.
He stopped when he saw her kneeling beside the ruined rug.
“Miss Moreno.”
Sadi looked up.
“Yes?”
“You’re coming with me.”
Her stomach tightened.
“Why?”
“Mr. Falcone asked for you.”
“He’s awake?”
“For now.”
That answer frightened her more than anything else.
The drive took thirty minutes.
They did not go to a hospital.
They went to Gabriel Falcone’s estate outside the city.
Doctors’ cars filled the circular driveway.
Inside, the house looked more like a private hotel than a home.
Sadi heard raised voices before she reached the second floor.
“Amputation is the safest course.”
“No.”
“Mr. Falcone, the bullet fragmented. There’s severe vascular damage.”
“No.”
“You could die.”
Gabriel’s voice became quieter.
“That changes nothing.”
Enzo opened the bedroom door.
Sadi stopped.
The man who had looked untouchable two hours earlier was lying shirtless beneath white sheets, his left shoulder wrapped in thick bandages already stained red.
Three doctors stood near the bed.
Another surgeon was leaving.
His expression told Sadi enough.
Gabriel looked toward her.
“The waitress.”
“Sadi,” she said.
“I know.”
Enzo closed the door.
Gabriel lifted his right hand slightly.
“Come here.”
Sadi approached.
On the bedside table lay the cufflink.
G.F.H.
Beside it was the attacker’s phone.
Gabriel nodded toward both.
“The man you dropped wasn’t drunk.”
“I figured that out.”
“He was watching the room.”
“For the shooter?”
“Probably.”
“What do those letters mean?”
Gabriel watched her.
“That’s what I need to know.”
Another doctor entered.
Older.
Exhausted.
He carried scans under one arm.
“Mr. Falcone.”
Gabriel did not look away from Sadi.
“Say it.”
The surgeon hesitated.
“If we don’t amputate at the shoulder tonight, you probably won’t survive until morning.”
Sadi’s eyes shifted toward Gabriel.
He did not react.
“Leave us.”
The doctors exchanged looks.
Nobody argued.
When they were gone, Gabriel said, “You cleaned the dining room.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see anything else?”
Sadi thought.
Broken glass.
Wine.
Blood.
Dropped purses.
Silverware.
The cufflink.
Then she remembered something strange.
Under Gabriel’s chair.
A small plastic cap.
Clear.
Almost invisible.
“I found something,” she said.
Enzo straightened.
“What?”
“I thought it came from a pen.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I put it in the trash tray.”
Enzo was already reaching for his phone.
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
“What did it look like?”
“Tiny. Clear. Blue stripe around the edge.”
The room went silent.
Enzo stopped dialing.
Gabriel looked at him.
“You recognize it?”
Enzo did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
“What?” Sadi asked.
Gabriel’s voice dropped.
“Medical equipment.”
Her skin went cold.
The surgeon’s warning echoed in her head.
Amputation.
Tonight.
Death by morning.
Sadi looked at the bandage covering Gabriel’s shoulder.
Then at the twenty different doctors coming and going.
“What kind of medical equipment?”
Enzo finally answered.
“A cap from an injection port.”
Sadi stared at him.
“But nobody treated him in the restaurant.”
“No,” Gabriel said.
Outside the bedroom, footsteps approached.
Fast.
A guard entered without knocking.
His face was drained of color.
“Boss.”
Gabriel turned.
“We found the fake waiter.”
“Alive?”
The guard hesitated.
“No.”
Gabriel’s expression hardened.
“And?”
The guard placed a photograph on the bed.
Sadi looked down.
The fake waiter was lying inside Belladonna’s walk-in freezer.
But something had been written across his white uniform in black marker.
Only three words.
SHE SAW EVERYTHING.
May you like
Gabriel slowly looked at Sadi.
Then every light in the mansion went out.
