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

PART 4

Priya awakened in a bed larger than her entire bedroom at home.

For several confused seconds, she did not know where she was. Then her arm throbbed beneath the cast, and the previous day returned in violent fragments.

The alley. The tire iron. Dante kneeling among broken porcelain. Fifteen men.

A television mounted above the fireplace played the morning news with the volume turned low. Priya reached for the remote.

A serious-looking anchor stood before an image of police vehicles in Queens.

“Authorities are investigating the unexplained disappearance of fifteen known members of the Westside Cobras,” he reported. “No bodies have been recovered, and investigators have not identified any suspects.”

Priya’s blood turned cold.

The door opened.

Dante entered carrying tea, toast, and a small bottle of medication. He wore the same clothes as the night before. Rainwater darkened the shoulders of his coat.

Priya pointed at the television. “What did you do?”

He set the tray beside her.

“Dr. Reeves says you must eat before taking the medication.”

“Where are those men?”

“Somewhere they cannot hurt you.”

“Are they alive?”

Dante met her eyes. “Yes.”

She released the breath she had been holding.

“For now?” she asked.

His silence answered her.

Priya pushed the blanket aside and stood, swaying slightly.

“You cannot murder fifteen people because my arm is broken.”

“They did not merely break your arm.”

“That doesn’t give you the right.”

“They terrorized an innocent woman to collect another man’s debt.”

“And if you kill them, what will that make you?”

His jaw tightened.

“No one has spoken to me that way in a very long time.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

Dante stared at her.

Priya’s fear nearly failed her, but she forced herself to continue.

“You said I’m safe in this house. You said I belong here. But I do not belong to you, Mr. Castellan. I’m not one of your warehouses or cars.”

A strange expression crossed his face. Shame. It appeared only briefly, but she saw it.

“You are correct,” he said at last.

Priya had expected fury. The apology left her speechless.

“I am not accustomed to protecting something I cannot control,” Dante continued. “That is an explanation, not an excuse.”

“Where are they?”

“In a refrigerated warehouse in Brooklyn.”

“I want to see them.”

“No.”

“If you intend to punish them in my name, then I have a right to be there.”

“It is not safe.”

“Neither was my apartment. Neither was the subway. Neither was this house yesterday when I thought I would be fired for getting hurt.”

Dante looked at her cast. “You are extremely stubborn.”

“I had to become stubborn. People mistake quiet women for weak ones.”

 

An hour later, a black town car carried them toward Brooklyn.

Dante had objected until Priya threatened to call the police herself. She knew the threat was almost laughable, but it worked.

The warehouse stood beside an abandoned rail yard. Armed guards opened a steel door as Dante approached.

Inside, fifteen men sat bound to chairs beneath harsh fluorescent lights.

Silas Kade stopped shouting when he saw Dante.

Marcus Delacroix stopped breathing when he saw Priya.

Her legs weakened. The alley returned with such force that she smelled rain and spoiled milk. She remembered the tire iron rising above her.

Dante immediately moved between her and the men. “We can leave.”

Priya shook her head. “No.”

Silas stared at her cast. “This is about Owen’s sister?”

Dante stepped toward him. “You surrounded an unarmed woman. You mocked her. You broke her arm because her brother could not pay you.”

Silas’s face twisted with disbelief. “She’s a maid.”

Dante struck him hard enough to tip the chair sideways.

Priya flinched.

“Stand him up,” Dante ordered.

Two guards lifted the chair.

Marcus began pleading. “We didn’t know she worked for you.”

Priya looked at him. “That’s supposed to make it better?”

He lowered his eyes.

“You thought I was alone,” she continued. “You thought nobody would care what happened to me.”

“We were only delivering a message.”

“With a tire iron?”

Silas spat blood onto the floor. “What do you want? Money?”

Priya stepped around Dante. She was still afraid. Her knees trembled beneath her, but the men who had appeared enormous in the alley now looked small.

“I want the truth,” she said.

Silas laughed bitterly. “Truth doesn’t run this city.”

“Maybe that’s why people like you believe you can break a woman’s bones and call it business.”

Dante watched her.

Priya turned to him. “If you kill them, they disappear as victims of a mob war. Their families tell themselves they were good men. Their friends replace them. Nothing changes.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Make them confess.”

Silas’s laughter stopped.

Priya looked at the security cameras mounted near the ceiling.

“Put every assault, threat, payoff, and extortion on video. Give the recordings to prosecutors. Give them bank records and names. Let every person they frightened see them answering questions without their guns.”

Dante’s eyes narrowed. “You want the courts to punish them.”

“I want them to live long enough to understand they were not untouchable.”

Everett stepped forward from the shadows. “Boss, that would expose operations connected to us.”

Dante did not look away from Priya. “Only if the information points toward us.”

“Kade will talk.”

“He will talk regardless.”

Everett’s expression hardened. “We cannot leave this to chance.”

Priya noticed the urgency in his voice. It seemed excessive, almost personal.

Dante walked slowly toward Marcus. “You have until noon to record a complete confession,” he said. “Every crime. Every victim. Every officer or official you bribed.”

Silas cursed him.

Dante leaned close. “Refuse, and I reconsider the lady’s merciful proposal.”