The Bratva. Leone's been wanting to ask this since I told him Danila was helping me in Philadelphia. Danila is Bratva and I'm Cosa Nostra and our friendship has always existed in the space between those two worlds, and Leone is smart enough to know that the space between is where useful information lives.
"Restructuring," I say. "Their contracts with the Silent's supply chain are under pressure. Funding's drying up. Danila says there's movement at the top. New people positioning."
"Names?"
"Not yet. He's careful with names."
"He should be." Leone pauses. "Keep listening. Anything he gives you, I want to hear."
"Yes." Though, the truth is, I don’t know if I will tell Leone. I’m not a traitor, but I’m no snitch either. Especially against a brother.
"And Carmelo."
I wait.
"Whatever you're doing with this girl," he says. "Whatever this is… you know the family is behind you."
He doesn't say it softly. He doesn't say it with warmth or sentimentality or any of the things other families might attach to a sentence that meansI love you and I'm worried about you and I don't understand what you're doing but I'm not going to stop you. He doesn't know how to perform care so the words are rough around the edges, but true, nonetheless. He just does it, without the performance, and you either recognize it or you don't.
"I know," I say.
The call ends.
I put the phone down and stand at the window. The dinner shift is starting. Grace is back on the floor after what I assume was a staff meal or a break, and she's retying her apron and checking the reservation book.
Tomorrow I'm going to walk through that door.
I've decided this three times now, and each time I've found a reason to wait another day. Another day of data. Another day of watching her patterns, her schedule, the people around her. Another day of pretending that what I'm doing is anything except stalking, and that the right moment hasn't arrived yet.
The right moment isn't going to arrive. There's no version of this where a man my size walks into a restaurant and sits down at a table and orders food and the woman who brings it to him doesn't feel what he is. I've killed people. I've killed people this week. I have forty thousand dollars in cash under my bed, a knife on my belt and hands that washed a man's blood off four hours ago. Tomorrow those hands are going to be resting on a table while a woman named Grace sets a plate in front of me.
I don't know what kind of man I am when that happens. I've been the enforcer. The soldier. The butcher. I've been Aurelio's son, unofficial and unchosen until he chose me, and I've been the man who buried a knife in the dirt and replaced it with a tool that doesn't carry any memories. I've been the man in the room who says five words or fewer and means every single one of them.
I don't know what kind of man sits across from Grace.
So, I take to cleaning my nails. The knife does its work. Through the window, Grace picks up four plates without checking her grip and carries them and sets each one down with care, and her finger taps the edge of the last plate before she turns, one tap, just one.
Tap number fourteen today.
Right index finger. Surface: ceramic, plate edge. Duration: less than a second. Context: neutral, post-task, no visible stressor.
I've been keeping a count since I arrived.
Tomorrow, I’ll count again, and only then will I decide what kind of man I’ll be.
Chapter Four: Grace
Thedinnershiftishalf full when he walks in.
I'm at the POS entering a drink order for table seven; two glasses of the house red, a gin and tonic, and a sparkling water, and I don't see him come through the door. I hear it. Not him, specifically. The door. The sound of the street noise rising for a second and then cutting off, and the draft of cold air that pushes through the dining room when someone opens the front entrance. Then the particular quality of quiet that follows when a room full of people adjusts to someone new.
I look up and he's there.
He's standing just inside the door, taking in the room, not nervous, or looking for a friend or checking if a table is ready. He's reading the room. I've worked in restaurants long enough to know the difference between a customer looking for a seat and a person assessing a space, and this man is assessing. Hiseyes move from the door to the bar to the kitchen pass to the emergency exit by the restrooms, and he does all of it in about three seconds, and then he picks a table.
Table four. Against the wall. Facing the front door and the kitchen entrance both.
He sits down and the chair disappears under him. He's the biggest person I've ever served, and I've served a lot of people. Not just tall… wide, thick through the chest and shoulders and arms, the kind of build that doesn't come from a gym. His head is shaved close to the scalp, dark stubble, and his face is… I don't know. His face is hard to describe. The bones are too heavy, and the jaw is too wide and his brow sits low over his eyes and none of it works together in any way that adds up to handsome, but I'm looking at him and I'm still looking at him, and I don't know why I'm still looking at him.
