A Waitress Saved a Mafia King From His Wife—Then Learned His Enemies Had Been Hunting Her for Weeks

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Chapter 1: The Price on My Head

For a few seconds, the only thing I could hear was rain striking the mud between Dante and me.

Then his words caught up with me.

Someone had put a price on my head.

I pulled my injured hand away from his. The cut across my palm stung, but the pain felt distant beside the cold certainty settling in my chest.

“Why?”

Dante’s expression gave me nothing. Blood ran from his hairline to his jaw, and one side of his shirt was dark with rain and mud. He looked less like the untouchable man whose name made New York whisper and more like someone who’d just watched a car fall off a mountain.

“I don’t know yet.”

“You said your men have been searching for me.”

“They have.”

“For three weeks?” My voice cracked. “How can you search for someone if you don’t know what she did?”

“I didn’t say you did anything.”

The armed men behind him shifted in the rain. Their suits were soaked, their faces fixed on the trees, the road, the ravine—anywhere except me. One held a hand over his earpiece. Another watched my bloody fingers as if they might suddenly become a weapon.

The man who’d first shouted at me stepped forward. He was broad-shouldered, with close-cropped gray hair and a small scar crossing one eyebrow.

“Boss, we need to get you off this slope.”

Dante’s attention stayed on me.

“Elias, get a medic down here.”

Elias Voss glanced at Dante’s bleeding forehead, then at my palm.

“Already on the way.”

“You can answer me while we wait,” I said. “Who put out the bounty?”

“We haven’t identified the person who ordered it,” Elias replied. His voice was calm and clipped, like he was explaining a delay in a business meeting. “We received an anonymous tip about a threat against you. We verified that the information was credible. We’ve been trying to locate you since.”

“You verified it, but you don’t know who sent it?”

“That’s right.”

“Then how do you know it wasn’t a trick? Maybe someone wanted me found.”

“Cara,” Dante said, “that’s why I need you somewhere secure.”

I looked from him to the men around us. Their weapons were down now, but still visible. I had no reason to think they were the threat. I also had no reason to believe they couldn’t be.

“I’m not getting in a car with a group of armed strangers just because you tell me to.”

One of the guards gave a short, disbelieving laugh. Elias didn’t.

“She saved your life, and now she’s the one with the questions,” he said. “That seems fair.”

Dante winced as he tried to stand. A guard reached for him, but he lifted one hand to stop him.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

“I’m not the one who showed up with guns pointed at me.”

His eyes met mine. Something passed through them—anger, maybe, but not at me. It was there and gone too quickly for me to name.

“You’re right,” he said. “They shouldn’t have done that.”

The apology was so unexpected I almost missed it.

A medic arrived with a hard case and a waterproof jacket. While he checked Dante’s head, another guard wrapped a clean bandage around my hand. I stood still for it, though I hated the way everyone spoke around me as if I were an item that needed moving.

“Head injury,” the medic said. “We need to get you examined.”

“I’m fine,” Dante said.

“You’re bleeding, and you nearly went over a cliff.”

“I know what happened.”

“Then you know I’m not asking.”

The exchange sounded oddly familiar—the sort of argument people had when they had been having the same argument for years. Dante finally let the medic shine a light into his eyes.

I took that moment to check my phone. The screen was cracked, but it still worked. I had missed calls from Bellini’s and a string of messages from the manager.

I called him.

“Where the hell are you?” he snapped when he picked up. “You ran out in the middle of—”

“Mr. Moretti crashed. I’m with him. He’s alive.”

The line went quiet.

“You’re with Dante Moretti?”

“Yes. I have to go with his security team for medical care. My car is still at the roadside, near the broken guardrail. Can you tell someone to make sure it’s not left there?”

“Cara, are you hurt?”

“Just my hand. I’m okay.”

It wasn’t true, exactly. But I could still stand, so I chose the version of the truth that let me finish the call.

“Stay where you are,” he said. “I’ll send someone to find the car.”

“Don’t send anyone up the road without telling the police. It’s a crash scene.”

Another pause.

“I’ll handle it.”

I ended the call before he could ask me to explain why I’d been at the crash in the first place. Then I told Elias I wasn’t leaving my Honda behind.

“We’ll secure it,” he said. “Someone will meet your manager and make sure it’s moved safely.”

“I want to know who’s going to touch it.”

“You can know their name.”

“That’s not the same as knowing I can trust them.”

“No,” Elias said. “It isn’t.”

His refusal to pretend otherwise unsettled me more than a quick promise would have.

Dante had been moved onto a stretcher. He looked annoyed by the indignity of it, but he didn’t fight when the medic secured the straps.

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

It wasn’t phrased as a question.

“I heard you. I’m still deciding.”

“Cara.” His voice had softened, but the command was still there beneath it. “Whoever put out that bounty may know where you live. They may know where you work. They may already be looking for you.”

“And you know they’re looking because of an anonymous tip.”

“We know someone was willing to pay for information that would lead to you.”

“Did the tip include my name?”

Elias and Dante exchanged a look. Not a long one. Not a dramatic one. Just long enough to answer before either of them spoke.

“Yes,” Elias said.

My stomach tightened.

“What exactly did it say?”

“That the target was Cara Fields, a twenty-seven-year-old waitress at Bellini’s.”

For a moment, the hillside seemed to tilt beneath me.

Nobody had guessed. Nobody had mistaken me for another woman with the same face. The message had named me, my age, and my job. Someone had looked closely enough to know where I spent my days.

“How long ago?”

“Three weeks,” Elias said. “That’s when the tip came in.”

I stared at him.

“I didn’t know any of you three weeks ago.”

“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”

A gust of wind shoved rain beneath my collar. I could see the road above us through the broken branches. My Honda sat somewhere beyond the flashing lights, useless and battered, with my apron and the rest of my ordinary life inside it. My phone was down to twelve percent. My apartment was a subway ride away. I had no idea whether I’d be safer there or whether the person looking for me already knew the address.

I hated that Dante’s offer might be my best option.

I hated more that I couldn’t tell whether he understood what that meant.

“If I go with you,” I said, “I get to keep my phone. I get to call my manager again when I need to. And no one takes me anywhere without telling me first.”

One guard shifted. Dante’s eyes moved to him, and the man went still.

“Agreed,” Dante said.

“And I want the name of the person handling my car.”

“You’ll get it,” Elias said.

“I want to know whether you’re taking me to a hospital or one of your houses.”

“A secured townhouse in the city,” he replied. “A doctor will examine you there, and you can leave when the immediate threat is assessed.”

“By whom?”

“By you and me,” Dante said.

I studied his face. Even injured, he looked accustomed to the world making room for him. I wasn’t sure he knew how to offer protection without making it sound like an order.

But the rain was turning the dirt under my shoes to slick paste, and the mountain road beyond us was dark. I couldn’t see my Honda. I couldn’t see Bellini’s. I couldn’t see any version of the night in which I walked away untouched.

“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not agreeing to anything beyond getting out of this storm.”

“Understood.”

The medic started the stretcher up the slope. Elias walked beside it, issuing quiet instructions into his earpiece. One of the guards offered me an arm. I didn’t take it. I climbed carefully, using exposed roots for balance and protecting my bandaged hand against my chest.

At the top, three black SUVs waited beneath the flashing lights. A uniformed officer was speaking to one of Dante’s men near the guardrail. I wanted to ask what they’d told him, but my thoughts had become a jumble of bounty, brakes, blood, and the wreckage burning somewhere below the cliff.

Elias opened the rear door of the second SUV.

I paused.

“Are you going to sit beside me?”

“If you want.”

“Do I get to say no?”

“Yes.”

I looked at Dante, already inside the first vehicle, a medic beside him.

“Then I want to sit alone.”

Elias nodded and stepped back. I climbed in, keeping my phone in my hand. The door shut, cutting off the rain’s roar. The SUV smelled like leather and something faintly medicinal. I left my seat belt unfastened until the driver looked at me in the mirror.

“We’re not moving until you buckle up,” he said.

I watched him for a beat, then clicked it into place.

The convoy pulled onto the mountain road. The broken guardrail vanished behind us. I turned my phone over in my hands, waiting for it to ring, waiting for another message from the manager, waiting for some explanation that would make the night make sense.

None came.

The townhouse stood behind tall stone walls and a steel gate. Warm lights showed through the windows, but the place looked less like a home than a building designed to keep the world out—or keep someone in. The SUVs rolled into the courtyard one by one.

I was reaching for the door handle when an alarm chirped inside the lead vehicle.

Elias’s earpiece crackled.

He listened, and the color drained from his face.

“What is it?” I asked.