“That’s your overtime,” he mutters. “And additional compensation.”
Izzy looks down at it.
Even from here, I can picture the exact moment her expression changes. First suspicion. Then confusion. Then the dawning realization that the amount inside is far more than she expected.
“Donald.”
He takes a step back.
“It was a clerical issue.”
She studies him for a moment.
In another life, one where I was a better man or she belonged to a safer world, I might have enjoyed this openly. The way her mind works. The speed of it. The sharpness.
She does not accept easy answers. She does not trust miracles. She takes the gift apart in her hands looking for the knife hidden inside it.
Smart.
And dangerous, in its own way.
Her eyes lift towards my table. I rise before they can meet mine.
Leone does the same behind me, smooth as shadow.
“Leaving already?” Giovanni calls from the bar.
“I have an early morning,” I say.
It is not a lie. My mornings have been occupied for a year now.
As I button my jacket, I can feel Izzy’s attention still searching in my direction.
She will put it together eventually, or enough of it to be dangerous. That is the problem with helping intelligent women in secret. They rarely have the courtesy to remain oblivious.
So I do the only sensible thing.
I leave before she can ask a single question.
7
IZZY
Ikeep waiting for the catch.
That’s the problem with miracles when your life has trained you to expect scams. Even after Donald shoves the envelope into my hands, even after I duck into the staff bathroom and count it twice with shaking fingers, some part of me is still convinced the universe is winding up for a punchline.
But no.
The money is real.
All of it.
My missing overtime, plus more. A lot more. Enough that my knees nearly give out when I realize I can pay the daycare what I owe, catch up on a couple of smaller bills, and maybe even breathe for half a second without hearing the Jaws theme in the back of my head every time my phone buzzes.
Donald, meanwhile, looked like he’d just seen the devil. Every time I questioned him, his eyes kept darting toward the lounge like he expected someone there to materialize and finish the job if he said the wrong thing. He kept muttering about accounting errors and corrected paperwork and “hazardcompensation,” which is not a phrase that has ever in history come naturally out of Donald Bernardi’s mouth.
Something happened.
