Chapter 3
IZZY
By the time the dinner rush begins to slow down, the night already feels like it has lasted two days.
Restaurants have strange rhythms like that.
One minute everything is normal, guests chatting quietly over wine and pasta, servers moving in predictable patterns across the room.
Then something happens, one small disruption, and suddenly the entire evening spirals into chaos before anyone can stop it.
Tonight seems determined to outdo itself.
I lean against the service counter for half a second and mentally run through everything that has happened since seven o’clock.
First, Erin fainted.
One moment she was walking across the dining room with a tray of glasses.
The next she was cornered in the bathroom by freaking Clive, the restaurant’s top financier.
I don’t know what happened exactly, but word is, Don Lucchese himself protected her.
Then he lifted her in his arms before anyone else could react and carried her straight out of the restaurant without a word.
No one stopped him.
You don’t stop a man like Luca Lucchese when he looks like that.
The entire dining room pretended nothing unusual had happened, which is another skill rich customers develop surprisingly quickly.
Then Savannah disappeared.
At first, I thought she had gone to the kitchen to deal with another complaint. But ten minutes passed. Then twenty. And she still didn’t come back out.
What did come back inside, however, was Gerard, our head chef. With a broken nose.
There was dried blood on the front of his jacket, and he kept pressing a handkerchief to his face while muttering under his breath about “that bitch Savannah” and how she had no idea who she was messing with.
I didn’t ask questions, because there was no reason to.
I’ve been working here long enough to notice patterns.
And I notice things people don’t realize I notice.
Like which Don looks at which woman when they think no one is paying attention.
Riccardo Romano has been watching Savannah for months. Quietly. Patiently. The way a predator watches prey, except there is something strangely protective in the way he does it. I have seen it enough times now that I am confident about the interpretation.
Which means when Savannah disappears and Gerard walks back in with his nose broken and his pride bleeding all over the floor, Riccardo Romano has happened.
It doesn’t take a genius to guess that. I’m not na?ve. Gerard is a handsy piece of shit on a good day. I can imagine what he must have done to earn that broken nose. Would have given it to him myself, probably, had I been there.
This restaurant exists on the edge of two worlds. One of them serves pasta and expensive wine to Manhattan’s elite. The other runs quietly beneath the surface of the city, deciding who gets to live comfortably and who disappears without explanation.
The Dons sit at the intersection of those worlds.
I do my job by pretending not to see the second world. But that doesn’t mean I’m blind.
“Earth to Izzy.”
Amber’s voice pulls me back into the present. I realize I’ve been staring at the same empty tray for several seconds.
“What?” I say.
Amber wipes her hands on a towel and leans across the bar.
“You’re doing the thinking face again.”
“I do not have a thinking face.”
“You absolutely do,” Rose says from her stool nearby.
Rose has stayed later than usual tonight, helping Amber with small things around the bar while we serve the last stragglers. Normally she would have left hours ago, but she’s been unusually quiet this evening. I’ve caught her glancing toward the door more than once.
Everyone seems a little on edge tonight.
“What time is it?” Amber asks.
I glance at the clock.
Eleven forty-seven. My stomach drops.
“Shit.”
Amber follows my gaze to the clock and immediately understands.
“Go,” she says.
“I still have two tables finishing dessert.”
“I’ve got them.”
“I hate leaving you guys to close,” I say automatically.
“We’ll manage,” Amber replies with an easy smile. “Go home.”
Rose nods. “And remember to kiss the little one goodnight for us too!”
I hesitate.
Part of being the unofficial manager here means I feel responsible for everything that happens in this building. Leaving before the last guest walks out always feels like abandoning my ship halfway through a storm.
But another image rises in my mind immediately.
Noah. Waiting at home. The sitter watching the clock.
My entire life runs on tight timing like this. One missed step and the whole balancing act collapses.
“Okay,” I say finally.
Amber points toward the door.
“Move.”
I grab my bag from the staff locker and take one last look around the restaurant.
The mafia table has moved to the lounge area near the bar. Matteo and Giovanni are talking quietly over drinks. Leone stands behind Niccolò Neri’s chair like a silent shadow.
And Niccolò himself…
He looks up.
Just briefly.
Our eyes meet across the room again.
Then someone says something to him and his attention shifts away.
I push the moment out of my mind and head for the door.
There are exactly thirteen minutes left until midnight.
I make it home with one minute to spare.
The apartment building looks exactly the same as it always does when I return after a long shift: quiet hallway, flickering overhead light, someone’s TV murmuring faintly through a wall.
The building isn’t dangerous, exactly, but it’s the kind of place where you learn to keep your keys ready in your hand and your head down when you walk through the lobby.
By the time I unlock my apartment door, my entire body feels like it has been running on fumes for the last four hours.
Gabby is already standing in the living room with her jacket on.
She looks up from her phone when I walk in.
“Oh, hey,” she says. Her thumbs keep moving across the screen even while she talks. “I was literally about to head out.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “It was a crazy night at the restaurant.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
She sends another message and finally looks up again.
“Noah is fine, by the way. Ate all his dinner. Drew you a picture. I put it on the counter.”
“Thank you.”
“He went to bed around ten.”
Gabby’s phone buzzes again and she immediately glances down at it.
Gabby is eighteen, a freshman at the community college down the street, and permanently attached to her phone. She is also the only babysitter I can afford who doesn’t have any questionable connections to the wrong kind of people.
That matters more than anything else.
In this neighborhood, you learn to be careful about who you let into your life.
Besides, professional sitters charge twenty-five dollars an hour. Gabby charges fifteen. Which means I smile and thank her even when she sends voice notes to her friends while watching my child.
“You’re good from here?” she asks in an inquisitive tone.
“I’ve got it.”
“Cool.” She grabs her bag and heads for the door.
“See you next week.”
“Good night, Gabby.”
The door closes behind her, and the apartment becomes quiet.
For a moment, I just stand there in the kitchen, letting the silence settle around me.
Then I see the drawing. It’s lying on the counter exactly where Gabby said it would be. I take a few steps forward and I pick it up.
Noah has drawn three stick figures standing side by side.
The first one has long hair and a big smile. Above it, he has carefully written the word MOM in uneven block letters.
The second one is smaller. That one is labeled NOAH.
The third figure is taller than both of us. A simple stick figure.
Above, it he has written DAD.
My chest tightens instantly.
The drawing is sweet. So painfully sweet it almost hurts to look at.
Noah doesn’t know his father. He never has. And I have spent six years carefully avoiding every question that might lead him down that road.
Some truths are better left alone.
Still…
My eyes linger on the tall stick figure. Noah has drawn it with dark hair.
I swallow hard.
He looks so much like his father already.
Just then I hear a small voice behind me.
“Mommy?”
I turn around.
Noah is standing in the hallway doorway rubbing his eyes. His hair—dark, almost black—sticks up in every direction from sleep.
“What are you doing up?” I ask gently.
He shuffles forward and hugs my leg.
“Gabby was talking all night.”
“Talking?”
“Into her phone.”
I smile slightly. “That sounds like Gabby.”
He looks up at me. “What’s a hookup?”
Lost for words, I blink repeatedly. “What?”
“She said it,” he explained.
Of course, she did. I take a slow breath. “You are too young to worry about that word,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because it’s grown-up stuff. Like work and taxes and everything boring.”
He seems satisfied with that answer. A small miracle. He usually interrogates me until I’m left with no choice but to initiate a tickle fight to distract him.
“Come on,” I say softly.
I scoop him into my arms and carry him back toward his room. Noah wraps his arms around my neck immediately. He has always been affectionate like that.
Six years old going on seven. The center of my entire world.
His room is small but cozy, filled with mismatched toys and books and drawings taped to the walls.
I set him down in bed, pull the blanket over him, and kiss the little birthmark next to his ear.
When he asked me why he had it, I told him it’s because I was craving chocolate every day while he was in my belly.
I couldn’t bear to say the truth. That he got it from his father.
“You need to sleep,” I tell him.
He yawns.
“Are you tired?”
“Very.”
“Okay.”
I sit beside the bed and start humming the lullaby I’ve sung to him since he was a baby. It’s an old Italian song my mother used to sing to me.
“C’era una volta una gatta…”
My voice is quiet in the dim room.
Noah’s breathing slows almost immediately.
As I sit there watching him drift back to sleep, my mind drifts too. Everything in my life traces back to this moment. Dropping out of business school. Working double shifts. Putting up with Donald’s constant nonsense at the restaurant. Every compromise, every sacrifice.
All of it leads here. To this little boy sleeping peacefully in a narrow bed.
My son.
Noah.
The only reason I keep fighting through the chaos of my life every single day.
I brush a curl away from his forehead. He sighs softly in his sleep.
And for a moment, just one quiet moment in the middle of a long night, the world finally feels still.