She Begged Not to Be Fired After Dropping the Coffee Tray — Then the Mafia Boss Saw the Broken Arm She’d Been Hiding.

PART 3

“I fell.”

“No.” His voice was quiet, but the entire room seemed to contract around it. “Someone struck you with something heavy. A pipe. A bat.”

Priya began crying again.

“Please let me finish my shift.”

“You need a hospital.”

“I need my job.”

Dante looked at her for a long moment.

Then he removed a white handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around the cut on her left palm.

“You are not being fired.” She stared at him. “You are going to sit on that sofa,” he continued. “A doctor is coming. While we wait, you will tell me what happened.”

Twenty minutes later, Dr. Owen Reeves arrived with a black medical case. He examined Priya’s arm and immediately ordered portable X-ray equipment from the estate clinic.

“It’s fractured in two places,” he said. “One section is close to breaking the skin. I need to set it now.”

Priya’s face went pale.

Dante stood beside the window while the doctor injected a local anesthetic. When Reeves began pulling the bones back into alignment, Priya screamed into a cushion.

Dante crossed the room and crouched before her.

“Look at me.” She forced her eyes open. “Not the doctor,” he said. “Look at me.”

His steel-gray eyes held hers.

“Tell me who hurt you.”

The medication, exhaustion, and pain broke through the defenses she had spent a lifetime building.

“My brother owes money,” she whispered. “Sixty thousand dollars.”

“To whom?”

“Silas Kade.”

Dante became perfectly still.

“How many men?”

“Fifteen.”

Reeves paused.

Dante’s voice dropped. “Fifteen men surrounded you?”

“They wanted Owen. I told them I didn’t know where he was. Marcus Delacroix hit me with a tire iron.”

“Did the others try to stop him?”

Priya shook her head. “They laughed.”

Something changed in Dante’s face. It was not rage in the ordinary sense. Rage was hot and reckless. What entered his expression was colder — a decision being made behind locked doors.

“Please don’t go after them,” Priya said. “They’ll hurt Owen.”

“Your brother will be found before they find him.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly.”

Reeves finished securing the cast.

Dante rose and called Everett into the room.

His underboss entered, glanced at Priya’s arm, and frowned.

“Silas Kade,” Dante said. “Marcus Delacroix and every man who was with them last night.”

Everett looked from Dante to Priya. “What about them?”

“I want all fifteen located.”

“Boss, Kade may be garbage, but taking his entire crew could start a conflict.”

“Then make certain no one knows we took them.”

Everett hesitated. Dante stepped closer. “Before sunrise.”

Everett lowered his head. “Understood.”

Priya tried to stand. “Mr. Castellan, please.”

Dante turned toward her.

“You are staying here tonight. A room will be prepared downstairs.”

“I can go home.”

“No.”

“I don’t belong in a guest room.”

“You belong wherever you are safe.”

The words were firm, but something in them unsettled her.

“I don’t want anyone killed because of me,” she said.

Dante’s gaze remained on hers.

“Then rest,” he replied. “And let me handle the men who thought your life was worth less than a gambling debt.”

 

Outside, the rain intensified.

Black SUVs rolled through the estate gates one after another.

By midnight, three Westside Cobras had vanished from an Astoria bar. Five more disappeared from a poker game in Flushing. Two were taken from a pool hall. Another was stopped before boarding a bus to Philadelphia.

At 3:40 in the morning, Silas Kade and Marcus Delacroix were dragged from a basement apartment in Jackson Heights.

At 4:12, Everett called Dante.

“All fifteen are secured.”

Dante stood alone in the darkened study, looking at the coffee stain where Priya had fallen.

“Keep them alive,” he said.

Everett sounded surprised. “For how long?”

Dante looked toward the hallway leading to Priya’s room.

“Until I decide what they deserve.”