Don’s Gem (Five Borough Mafia #4)

Chapter 1 Amber

AMBER

I’m three drinks deep into the rush when I notice Rose hasn’t touched her mocktail.

I lift my brows in concern. This is not like her.

Around us, Notte Bianca hums the way it always does on a weeknight—low conversation, soft jazz, the clink of cutlery and glass.

The lights are warm, forgiving. The kind that make everyone look a little better than they really are.

I’m behind the bar, moving on muscle memory, pouring drinks for the table in the corner without needing to look twice.

Whiskey neat. Bourbon on the rocks. Negroni sbagliato.

I slide the glasses onto a tray and glance back at Rose.

She’s perched on her usual stool at the counter, shoulders slightly hunched, hands wrapped around her glass like she’s trying to make it last all night. The lime wedge hasn’t moved. The straw’s still pristine. She’s staring into the liquid instead of drinking it.

“You gonna finish that, or is it just for decoration?” I ask.

She blinks, then smiles too fast. “I’m pacing myself.”

It’s a lie. Not a big one. But I know her tells.

Rose Brown doesn’t pace herself. Rose Brown nurses nothing. She’s the kind of person who commits fully or not at all, whether it’s a new flower arrangement or a bad idea. Mocktails included.

I keep working, but my chest tightens in worry.

“I feel like I’m being followed.”

Rose had told me last week. Quietly. Like it was a half-formed thought she didn’t want to give too much space.

She’d said it with a laugh, like she expected me to brush it off.

Like she wanted me to. I hadn’t. I’d asked all the questions that came to mind.

What does he look like? When does it happen? Did she tell anyone else?

She’d shut it down immediately.

“I don’t want to make it a thing, Amber.” Which was Rose-speak code for I don’t want anyone getting involved. Her mess, hers to fix. Like she always does.

Even now, when I bring it up, she gives me half-answers and plays it off with a laugh. Like she’s silently begging me to stop digging.

So here we are. Me pretending everything’s normal. Her pretending she’s fine. The unspoken tension sitting between us like a third person at the bar.

I hate it.

Feeling powerless always makes my skin itch. I don’t do well with waiting. Or not knowing. Or watching someone I care about spiral quietly while insisting they’ve got everything under control.

It’s not the first time I’ve felt like this.

The memory sneaks up on me the way it always does. Uninvited and sharp.

Coral.

Three years ago, my older sister disappeared. It started the same way it’s starting now. Unease, jittery energy. Brushing off questions like they were nothing. It was odd, because Coral had never been that type of person. She’d been the sun itself, bright enough to blind you if you weren’t careful.

Then she started coming home from track practice wound tight, eyes flicking to every shadow on the walk back. She laughed it off when I asked what was wrong. Told me I was being dramatic.

I was seventeen. She was eighteen. Old enough to think she was untouchable. And despite the measly year between us, I’d thought she was untouchable too.

Then came the man in the red dress shirt.

I only saw him a couple of times. Always the same place. Leaning under a lamppost like he had nowhere else to be. Like he was waiting for something. Or someone.

Soon after, my sister didn’t come home from track practice.

After Coral vanished, everything blurred together. My life became hanging up missing person’s posters. Hundreds of them, stapled to poles, taped to windows, handed out on street corners until my throat hurt from repeating her name.

I started showing up at precincts and representatives’ offices, talking to anyone who might listen. Begging the police to look harder. To ask the right questions. To look for the man in the red shirt.

They didn’t. They decided she’d run away, and that was that.

I told them she wouldn’t. Not like that. Not without saying goodbye. Not without her favorite sneakers or her charger or the jacket she stole from me and never gave back.

But they didn’t care. Not about what I had to say, and sure as shit not about Coral. At the tender age of seventeen, that’s the hard truth I learned: people don’t care the way you think they will. Most of the time, they don’t care at all.

It’s been three years, and Coral is still missing.

The only thing I have left of her is the bracelet on my wrist. Coral beads strung between amber ones. Corny as hell, but that’s just how we were. We’d bought them together from a street vendor, matching on purpose, like idiots. I’ve worn mine every day since. She disappeared wearing hers.

After she was gone, my parents aged all at once. Like someone flipped a switch. Their minds went soft around the edges. Dad stopped talking altogether, and Mom started forgetting things.

Grief does that. It eats holes where memories used to live.

I quit high school and started working full time, armed only with a fake ID and willing hands. Under the dim lights of a bar, I could look older and like I knew what I was doing, so that’s where I went. Besides, my parents needed me during the day. I learned fast, poured faster.

Then, when Mom and Dad became shadows of themselves, barely able to take care of themselves, I had to spring for specialized care.

A home, but a good one, none of those Nurse Ratched places they talk on TV.

This place is a little corner of heaven, and costs like one.

I signed on the dotted line with a knot of anxiety in my throat but zero regrets, because I knew I was giving them the best.

I haven’t taken a night off work since.

The bills don’t care where the money comes from, so I hoard tips like a dragon and don’t feel bad about it. Every dollar counts. Every shift matters.

I roll my shoulders and drag myself back to the present.

“Rough night?” Izzy asks as she walks by with a tray of empty glasses tucked against her hip.

I give her a small smile, preparing my own tray of full glasses. “The usual.”

She snorts softly, because she knows exactly what that means.

It was Izzy who taught me the job. She’s head waitress now, which mostly means she does everything she used to do, plus the parts no one else wants.

Her gaze flicks toward the table in the corner, then back to me. “You’re on the mafia table again. Fun times.”

I roll my eyes. “They’re not mafia. They’re just well-dressed CEOs with more money than our organs are worth on the black market.”

“Possibly.” Izzy’s eyes twinkle with laughter. “But those tattoos don’t lie.”

“Lots of rich guys have tattoos now. It’s a thing.”

She hums, clearly not buying it, then steps aside to let me through. “Try not to flirt your way into a mafia wedding.”

“Please. I’m not their type.”

Izzy raises a brow like she doesn’t believe that either, that cocky smile of hers still in place, then disappears toward the kitchen.

I head for the corner table. Whiskey neat, blue label. Negroni sbagliato, with prosecco instead of gin. Bourbon on the rocks.

You can tell a lot about a man by what he drinks. I’ve been bartending for three years now, and it’s practically a creed. You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But you absolutely can, and should, judge a man by his liquor.

The whiskey goes to the one with the calm eyes and the copper beard—Mr. Moretti, if I remember correctly. It's the kind of drink that gets passed down from father to son, taught not discovered. He nods once when I set it down, polite and distant.

The negroni sbagliato goes to the man with the sharp suit and sharper features. Mr. Neri, the oldest of the bunch. He thanks me with a curt nod, but I don't hold that against him. He never speaks a word more than he has to, if he can help it.

The bourbon is last.

I hesitate for half a beat before handing it over. Not because I’m nervous, but because I know that bottle. Black Maple Hill, purple label. Strong, honeyed, just a hint of brown sugar at the end. It’s my favorite, too.

Our fingers brush when he takes the glass. An accident, the kind of oversight I haven’t let myself make since my first year on the job. These people are rich, and they don’t want commoner skin oils on their expensive silks.

But we touch, and Mr. Gallo does not pull away.

The contact sends a quick, unwelcome jolt up my arm. Or maybe not so unwelcome. It’s hard to tell, in the split second that passes between us, that spark of electricity that drags his gaze to mine.

He’s twice my age. Dangerous. The kind of man I should not even consider. But at that moment, my body doesn’t know that.

It just knows what it wants.

But my brain knows better, so I yank back my hand as if burned. The motion is abrupt—too abrupt. It jostles the glass and makes a couple of drops of expensive bourbon splash on the back of his hand.

“Oh, sh—” I blurt before catching myself. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Gallo."

I steady the glass before it can topple, but the damage is done.

Without thinking, I reach for a napkin and start dabbing at the wet spot. “Please, let me. I’ll remake—”

“No need,” he replies. His voice is difficult to decipher. I can't tell if he's annoyed or not. As he gingerly takes the napkin out of my hand, his eyes don't drift from mine. “And it's Giovanni.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

"Mr. Gallo's my father. I’m just Giovanni.”

It takes me a second to realize he’s joking. It's so dry, his face so unchanged, I was ready to prostrate myself and beg for forgiveness.

I suppose he has that effect on people. Between the piercing brown eyes, the artfully casual undercut, and the barest hint of stubble on his chiseled jaw, he looks like he belongs on a GQ spread, not at a corner table at some Italian restaurant’s lounge bar.

Shit. I’m staring, aren’t I?

Then I realize I still haven’t answered him.

My process of remembering what we were talking about is soon interrupted by a huff from negroni man, Mr. Neri. He quietly mouths to Giovanni, “Leave the girl alone, Gio. Let her work.”

Yes. Perfect excuse. Time to go.

I flash one last apologetic smile, tuck the tray against my side, and retreat back toward the bar before my face can give me away.

Behind me, I can feel their attention linger. On my fingers, the warmth of Giovanni's hand lingers longer.

By the time I reach the counter, the hum of the room feels louder, heavier. Rose looks up at me, eyes narrowing slightly.

“That looked painful,” she says. “What was the hold-up? They didn’t like their rich-boy juice?”

“Not their fault this time.” I sigh. “I’m a bit of a klutz tonight.”

“No way.” Rose tips her glass to me. “You’re perfect, as always. The dictionary definition of a hot, competent bartender.”

“Tell that to the mafia table.”

She rolls her eyes. “Izzy’s rubbing off on you.”

Probably. But I can’t stop looking back at Mr. Gallo—Giovanni. His dark suit that blends in the black velvet cushions, his dark eyes still pointed in my direction. I still can’t tell whether he’s upset with me or—

Or what? Lusting after the broke bartender who’s half his age?

Yeah. As if.

Besides, men like Gallo aren’t my type. Rich, powerful men who treat the world like it belongs to them, like everything in it is a trinket that came with the house. Like everyone is theirs to control.

The man in the red shirt oozed the same air.

I wasn’t smart enough to realize it then, but I’m not going to make the same mistake twice. No matter how GQ-gorgeous he can be, no matter how unexpectedly funny and forgiving, he comes from a different world.

The same world that swallowed up my sister.

Rose says something else, a joke or other, and I laugh. I let myself be swept back into the rhythm of the night and the occasional conversation with her at the counter, between orders and clean-up and everything else.

Before we know it, the bar is empty, and it’s closing time.

Donald should be the one doing it. He’s the manager, after all. But somehow he always makes himself scarce while the place is still full, vanishing right before the last rush like he’s late for something important. Izzy says he has a sixth sense for unpaid labor.

Early on, he tried to delegate closing to her. That lasted about a week.

Izzy has a kid at home. A real one. A bedtime and a babysitter and an actual life waiting for her outside these walls. So most nights, I stay. I always have. It’s easier that way. I can lock up, count the till, wipe down the bar, and let her get home without guilt gnawing at her.

Rose shouldn’t have to stay, but she does. In the last few months, she’s taken to keeping me company every night.

She doesn’t say why, and she doesn’t have to.

She lingers while I flip stools and run the last load of glasses through the washer, chatting about nothing and everything, asking me what song is playing, whether the basil at the front needs watering tomorrow, if I think it’s going to rain.

She’s clearly afraid of going home.

I don’t call her out on it. I just let her be here, because sometimes that’s the only help she will accept.

“Let’s go,” I tell her, as soon as I’m done.

When we finally step outside, the street is quieter. Not empty, but thinner. The city itself is at that in-between hour where it hasn’t gone to sleep yet, but it’s thinking about it.

We walk together toward the subway entrance, our steps slowing the closer we get. Rose keeps adjusting the strap of her bag like it won’t sit right.

“You sure you’re okay?” I ask, stopping at the top of the stairs.

She hesitates.

For half a second, I see it on her face—the truth, sharp and naked. Fear. The kind that makes you want to reach out and grab onto the nearest solid thing.

I brace myself, ready for her to say it. Ready to stay. Ready to walk her home if she asks, or drag her into my apartment and force her into a month-long sleepover so she can finally rest and think and breathe.

Then she smiles.

The smile is too quick, too thin, and sis nothing near genuine. It’s the kind you put on because you don’t want to deal with what comes next.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Of course I am.”

My stomach knots.

I want to argue, but before I can, she speaks again.

“We’ll see each other tomorrow, yeah?” she adds.

“Yeah” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Tomorrow.”

She turns and disappears down the steps, swallowed by the station lights.

I wait until she’s gone before I head the other way.

That’s when I notice them.

Across the street, near the curb. Mr. Moretti and Mr. Gallo.

I remember his subtle caution. Giovanni.

They’re standing by a dark sedan, talking low. Giovanni’s jacket is open now, his posture relaxed, one hand tucked into his pocket. He looks up at the exact wrong moment and our eyes meet.

I watch his expression soften, turning into recognition.

My pulse kicks.

I don’t stop. I don’t wave. I don’t give him time to decide whether to come over.

I keep walking, faster now, and let the night close around me.