Chapter One
Present Day
Salvatore’s Restaurant
Outside of Little Italy, Caldwell
She wants the tossed salad, no dressing, the grilled vegetables, and she can have the broiled chicken. No sauce.”
Princess Dennesha, blooded daughter of Queen Catra, heir to the throne of the Shadows in the Territory of the s’Hisbe, beloved blooded daughter of His Highness the Prince Consort iAm, looked away from the woman who’d refused to meet her eyes since the moment the couple had been seated in the section Denne was covering.
The man on the other side of the two-top was fiftyish and thick-necked to the point of busting out the open collar of his shirt.
With the shoulders of a former football player, the girth of a current drinker, and the orbital brow of a Neanderthal, it was clear he put the “thug” in “aspirational asshole.” Suit was expensive, watch was an AP Royal Oak, and she hadn’t noticed the shoes, but she was betting they had logos on them.
Gucci. LV. Or Ferragamo.
“I’ll have the antipasto and the lasagna al forno,” he announced as he ran a meaty paw over his slick-backed hair. “You can bring me another old-fashioned with the bread. T’anks, sweetheart.”
The smile that was sent her way was so dismissive, the flick of the man’s chubby hands was unnecessary.
Denne glanced back at the woman. She was so much younger than him and had the darting eyes and tense posture of someone who dodged a lot of slaps.
Dressed in a blue sheath that came down to her mid-thigh on the bottom and nearly her belly button on the top, she had dark skin and a blond weave that fell to her waist. Her shoes were high, strappy, and about as practical for the winter weather as a pair of toothpicks.
“Hello?” the guy demanded as he shot over a glare. “You forget your brain or sumthn?”
“No, I didn’t,” Denne murmured.
Pulling a pivot, she walked it for the kitchen’s flap doors.
The restaurant was running at seventy-five percent capacity, pretty typical for a weeknight at seven p.m. Most of the folks were regulars, older couples eating the same thing and business types entertaining clients, but there were a few girls’-nights-out happening, clutches of moms sharing a nice meal and a glass of wine.
As for the asshole, she didn’t recognize him specifically, but she’d certainly seen versions of the suit-and-shiny-shoes gangster shit before.
Of course, if he’d been a real high roller, he would have been seated in one of the banquettes in the bar area.
Instead, he’d been given a table in the middle of the tourists’ room.
So he hadn’t tipped the ma?tre d’.
Sal’s was an Italian institution in Caldwell, with ties that went all the way back to the NYC La Cosa Nostra a hundred years ago in the 1950s.
It was the kind of place where real mobsters still came for the food and wannabe tough guys just had to flex—and the latter did tend to bring that kind of too-thin, twitchy, younger woman with them, another thing they felt they owned.
The actual OGs only came with their associates.
Pushing her way into the kitchen, things were hopping, sous chefs sautéing at the stove, dessert staff pulling pastries out of the ovens, the dishwashers the only people loitering, because the first wave of dirties from the entrées hadn’t come to them yet.
“Marco, we got an anti-past, a lasagna, a roasted chicken with veg.” She kept a curse to herself. “No sauce. I’ll do the salad.”
“You got it, Denne.”
Head chef Marco Andrello was a full-bred Italian who rode the range like a maestro, even though he was only in his thirties.
As humans didn’t live very long, she was glad for him and for Sal’s.
He still had a good forty or fifty years of doing what he loved to do, and no one could argue that his passions were misplaced.
He’d managed to get them a Michelin star, something that was unheard of for a place like this where the portion sizes were normal, the prices reasonable, and the history not of the snotty variety.
Swinging by the bread station, she nodded at the kid who was cutting fresh slants off the loaves. He handed her a basket, and she grabbed a butter plate.
“Thanks, Peter.”
She hipped out the other set of doors to the bar. Julianne was their tender, and the sixty-year-old grandmother of two was tough as they came. Nobody got away with nothing at her counter, as she liked to say.
“Another old-fashioned, please.”
“Sure thing, D.”
As a rocks glass was slammed down on the prep pad, Denne looked out through the archway.
The fucker with the big-boy attitude was on his phone, his elbows planted on the table like tree trunks, his jacket riding up on his thick biceps and pooching at the shoulders.
Across from him, that woman was like the place settings, perfectly arranged and gleaming in all her immobility.
Except for her eyes.
They continued to dart around, even as her head didn’t move and there was no blinking.
Humans are not your business, Denne told herself as she turned back to the bar. Never had been, never will be.
When his lordship’s old-fashioned was ready, she went back to the table. The guy didn’t look up as she swapped the full with the empty. Then again, he was busy screening profiles of other women, the swipe-rights going like the wind—
A stiletto stretched out from under the table, blocking Denne’s way.
Glancing down, the first thing that registered was a pattern of bruising on the thigh.
The fan of discoloration was exposed as the short skirt rode up and it was clearly from a hard grip.
And then the woman put her hand out in an unusual position with the thumb down on the palm and the other four fingers extended outward.
In a movement too deliberate to miss, those fingers curled in and re-extended. Curled in… and re-extended.
“Where’s the bread,” the guy demanded.
Shit, she thought as she looked at her empty left hand.
With a quick look over her shoulder, she saw the damn basket back on the bar. “I’ll get it right now.”
“Sir.”
“I’m sorry?”
His stare flipped up from his phone, and the cold calculation was like he already had a hand on the front of her throat and was squeezing. “Right away… sir. Put some respect on it, wouldya.”
Denne’s fangs tingled in the roof of her mouth. “I’ll be back with the bread.”
She could feel his aggression follow her as she returned to Julianne’s zip code, and the soundtrack in her head was a pounding beat to the tune of leave-it-leave-it-leave-it.
“I woulda brought it to you,” Julianne said as she hit the blender on a bunch of limes and liquor. More loudly, she tacked on, “But I’m makin’ four daiquiris. Who the hell orders frozen fruity drinks in January.”
“I dunno, I never drink them.”
The bartender hit an even higher gear with a stubby punch. “That’s ’cuz you got taste buds. Might as well suck on fabric softener.”
On the second trip back, the man had turned his chair to face out from the table and he was staring through his eyebrows like he expected Denne to insult his mother’s virtue—and was hoping she did so he could hit her.
Also, with his knees spread wide, he was clearly implying he was packing a monster in his pants.
Denne put the bread down and turned away, because sometimes a brush-off was the best way to knee an asshole in the balls.
And as a couple of other diners glanced up from their cabernet sauvignon and their carbonara, she was reminded that there were advantages to those rats without tails being everywhere.
If she were alone with this guy? God knows what she would do to him.
Public places could save fucking lives, they really could.
“Leave it,” she said under her breath. “Denne, you leave this alone.”
Except maybe it was the fact that the woman’s skin was dark like her own. Or that fragile perch on the chair, like she was about to shatter. Or the fucking poser’s arrogance…
When she got back into the kitchen, she headed down the hall that led to her little office and the rear exit of the restaurant.
Just inside her door, her parka was hanging off a hook that had been screwed into the concrete wall, and she grabbed her phone out of a pocket.
Even though she had a feeling what the hand signal meant, she looked the thing up online.
“Goddamn it,” she muttered as she clicked her screen off.
She was shoving her cell back into the puffy jacket when the door in from the parking lot opened wide and one of the other servers hustled in along with a lot of cold and a swirl of snowflakes.
“Oh my God, thank you for covering!” The young man stomped his boots on the matting and started unwinding a red scarf from his neck. “Me and Nick are totally scrambling with the wedding coming up. I never knew it would be so exhausting—”
When the fast syllables dried up, she looked properly at her friend.
Willie Newley was six feet twelve hundred inches tall, as his fiancé always said, thin as a soda straw, and dressed in the mandatory black server’s uniform.
Ichabod Crane meets dopamine: He was always in a good mood, and he carried his optimism and cheerful vibe like a rainbow he intended to share a feel-great head cold.
The smile faded. “Girl. What’s going on.”
“Oh, nothing. S’all good—”
“Nuh-uh. Your face is scrunched up like when you have to close out receipts for the month.” He put his hands on his hips. “You have three hours to tell me. If you haven’t by the end of the shift, I’m calling Nick in on this.”
Denne laughed a little. “Okay, there is no reason to escalate that far this fast.”
“I should have known better than to put you on the floor.” He yanked the scarf off and started peeling his layers. “You don’t do well with people. At least you can stay in your sanctuary for the rest of the night now.”
“I’m keeping sixteen.”
“What are you talkin’ ’bout.” Willie waved away the comment. “Your computer is waiting. Those numbers can’t add up themselves.”
“I’m just going to finish things with that one.” She stepped out into the hall and put her hand up. “That’s it.”
Willie stared at her for a long moment, like he was an internal medicine specialist looking for a disease.
“Okay, you do you.” He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. “And I owe you. But you’re still going to tell me what’s up.”
“We are totally even, actually.” She leaned into all of his bones as they started walking together. “You didn’t ask me to be in your wedding party. That’s priceless.”
“See, I do love you.”
They separated as he broke away to head for the locker room and she went out into the kitchen to the garde-manger. As she made up the woman’s plate of mesclun, one of the newer hires, Christia, was almost finished with the asshole’s antipasto.
Oh, if only she were in s’Hisbe, Denne thought. As a Shadow, she had a whole lexicon of “spices” she could have added to that plate.
Shadows were great cooks, after all. Particularly if they were preparing their enemies to be the protein source.
With the greens-no-dressing all set, she crossed her arms over her chest and eased back against the counter while Christia finished with the display of cured meats and marinated peppers and olives.
All around, the kitchen was ordered chaos, kind of like her mind.
Everything had its purpose, and there was a system governing it all, but total disintegration was just one hiccup away, one stalled decision, one misstep.
Like getting involved in that young woman’s three-hundred-pound, misogynistic problem.
“You want me to take them out?” Christia said.
The girl had started about six months ago, and she was a good worker. Always on time, no drama, working her way through SUNY Caldwell. It was hard to say whether she would be here for six months or become another Julianne, who was a lifer.
“No, I’ll do it.” Denne forced a casual smile. Which was a nice trick considering her fangs had fully dropped. “Thanks.”
Before she put everything on a tray, she snagged an empty ramekin and ladled out a serving of the red wine vinaigrette.
Tilting the little crock-ware container on the edge of the salad plate, she snagged the antipasto, got the load up on her shoulder, and butt-first’d the flap doors.
As she entered the dining room, the chatter of the customers was something she’d been hearing for the past decade, and there was a peacefulness to the white noise.
She couldn’t say she loved Sal’s. That was her father, iAm.
But she was used to it, and there was something to be said for the predictable.
Especially when she felt like she had no direction at all. Which was kind of a problem for someone with a crown in their future.
Back at the asshole’s table, she kicked out a stand and put the tray down. After serving the antipasto, she took the mesclun with the contraband vinaigrette and went to—
“What’s on that plate.”
Denne assumed a pleasant confusion. “Huh?”
The man picked up a fork and stabbed in her direction. “The dressing. I said no dressing for her.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She made a show of picking up the ramekin. “I’ll just take it away—”
You know, the great thing about vinaigrette, unlike, say, Thousand Island, blue cheese, or ranch, was the shit had the viscosity of water. So as she tipped the container, the dressing splashed out. Right into the woman’s lap.
Oops.