MAFIA BOSS HEARD THE WAITRESS ACCIDENTALLY CALL HIM “BABY” IN FRONT OF HIS ENTIRE CREW—THEN HE SMILED AND ORDERED HER TO SAY IT AGAIN.

“Slower.”

Roman Gallagher said it like he was ordering another bourbon, not like four armed men were preparing to witness my final moments on earth.

I gripped my empty tray so hard the metal edge dug into my palm.

“Respectfully,” I said, “I don't think that's part of my job description.”

Something moved across his face. Not the dangerous little smile I'd already seen. Something almost human.

One of his guards cleared his throat. The one with the crooked nose still had his hand halfway inside his jacket.

Roman noticed. “Silas. Hand on the table.”

The guard obeyed.

“All of you,” Roman added. “She's carrying drinks, not explosives.”

Four hands appeared on the dark leather tabletop. Roman turned to me again.

“Was it an accident?”

“An extremely regrettable one.”

“That's a shame.”

“Is it?”

“I was beginning to think someone in this city liked me.”

I should have laughed politely, apologized, and disappeared. Instead, exhaustion and the nine hundredth text from David made me say, “Maybe work on the armed welcoming committee.”

The youngest guard coughed into his fist. The older men stared at him as if he had volunteered to be buried alive.

Roman looked at me for another heartbeat, then picked up his bourbon.

“What's your name?”

“Cassidy Rowan.”

“Cassidy,” he repeated, as though testing whether the name belonged in the room. “You can call me Roman. But don't let my men convince you that you owe me a performance.”

“You're the one who requested an encore.”

“Fair point.”

He raised the glass an inch. Dismissal or toast, I couldn't tell. I took the dismissal.

Halfway to the service station, my knees finally remembered fear. I braced myself against the stainless-steel counter and found Nina Alvarez staring at me. Nina had managed the Onyx Club for five years and could detect a broken champagne flute from across the room.

“Cass,” she whispered. “What did you say to Booth Four?”

“Something profoundly stupid.”

“His men reached for their guns.”

“I noticed.”

“What did he say?”

“That he wants better service. And possibly a new personality.”

Nina didn't smile. She slid a glass of water toward me and leaned in.

“Listen carefully. A man in a gray raincoat has been asking the staff when you get off work. He said he's your boyfriend.”

David. My stomach turned.

“He's not supposed to come here.”

“Then tell him that. He offered the host fifty dollars for your schedule.”

David had been borrowing money for months: rent when he supposedly had a roommate, repairs for a car he never let me ride in, a loan he claimed belonged to a friend. My paycheck paid for a room in Queens, my mother’s prescription co-pays, and whatever food I could stretch to payday. David treated my bank account like a shared drawer and my objections like personal insults.

I had planned to end it on Sunday, in a public place, after I moved the few things I'd left at his apartment.

Now it was Thursday and he was at my job.

I checked my phone. Nine messages.

WHERE ARE YOU.

DON'T IGNORE ME.

NEED YOU TO PICK UP A PACKAGE.

And finally: YOU THINK THAT MAN WILL PROTECT YOU?

I read the last sentence twice.

David didn't know Booth Four's occupant. At least, I'd thought he didn't.

“Did you tell anyone which table I was serving?” I asked Nina.

She frowned. “No. Why?”

I turned toward the floor. Roman's booth sat behind a partition of smoked glass, shielded from the public area. He was looking down at a ledger again, his pen moving steadily across a page. The guards weren't looking at their boss. They were watching the door.

A folded slip of cream-colored paper waited on the service counter beside the receipt printer. My name was written across it in blue ink.

I opened it.

Don't go home tonight. He gave someone your address.

No signature.

I stared at the words until the letters lost their meaning. Then I looked toward Booth Four. Roman was still bent over his work.

“What's that?” Nina asked.

“Someone trying to scare me.”

Her face tightened. “Are they succeeding?”

I folded the note into the pocket of my apron. “Spectacularly.”

At midnight the DJ shut off the music and the room deflated into the clatter of stacked chairs. I spent forty minutes counting tips and polishing glasses, refusing to acknowledge every passing shadow as a threat. When I went to the staff exit, Nina was waiting in her coat.

“Walk with me,” she said.

“You're going the other way.”

“I've decided to take the scenic route.”

Outside, an October wind brought the smell of wet pavement and exhaust. Two blocks away, someone leaned against a dark sedan under a broken streetlight. I recognized David's jacket before I saw his face.

He pushed away from the car.

“Cass. Baby. Finally.”

“Don't call me that.”

He smiled without warmth. “Funny. I heard you don't mind calling other men that.”

The blood left my face.

“How would you know what I said?”

He glanced at Nina. “Can we have a private conversation?”

“No,” she answered.

David's smile thinned. “This doesn't concern you.”

“The part where you're waiting outside my employee's job does.”

He reached into his pocket. My body stiffened before I saw it was a key ring.

“I need you to pick something up for me,” he said. “You're always saying I should get organized. Here's your chance.”

“I'm not doing favors tonight.”

“It's from the club. One little book. Your new boyfriend won't even miss it.”

“I don't have a new boyfriend.”

“Then why is the boss looking at you like that?”

A black SUV slowed at the intersection. David's attention flickered toward it. For one instant his confidence disappeared.

“Who told you about Roman?” I demanded.

“Don't say his name out here.”

“You did.”

“Cassidy, please.” His voice lowered. “I borrowed money from people who don't offer payment plans. I can settle it if you bring me one page from that ledger. Just one. Nobody gets hurt.”

I remembered Roman's pen, the leather binding, the men surrounding his booth. Whatever was inside that book, it did not belong to me, and David had no right to volunteer me for stealing it.

“Absolutely not.”

David took a step forward. Nina stepped between us.

“Walk away,” she said.

The SUV stopped beside the curb. Silas Ward emerged, his expression as welcoming as a locked gate.

“Ms. Rowan,” he said, “your ride is available if you want it.”

David looked as though somebody had changed the rules of gravity.

“No,” I said automatically. Then I looked at Nina. “Could I stay at your place?”

“Already cleared the couch.”

Silas nodded once, an acknowledgment rather than an argument. “We'll remain here until you're safely gone.”

David's jaw worked. “You're making this worse.”

“Maybe,” I told him. “But for the first time tonight, I'm deciding what happens to me.”

Nina and I walked toward the corner. I could feel David's stare on my back, and I did not look around until we turned.

Only then did Nina speak.

“That note on the counter. Roman sent it, didn't he?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you think he's dangerous?”

I thought about the guns and the ledger and the way every man at Booth Four had moved at the sound of one finger tapping glass.

“Yes.”

“Do you think David is?”

I remembered how easily he had offered me up to people he claimed to fear.

“Yes,” I said again. “And I'm done pretending one is harmless just because I used to love him.”

On the subway, Nina and I sat beneath an advertisement promising a dream apartment in a neighborhood neither of us could afford. A teenager with headphones offered his seat to an elderly man. Across the aisle, a mother was trying to persuade a sleepy boy to keep his shoes on. The ordinary world kept conducting its little negotiations, unaware that mine had split open.

“I could call my cousin,” Nina said. “She knows people who can help if David starts hanging around again.”

“I don't want a stranger handling my life.”

“Then don't let one. I'm offering you names, not orders.”

I leaned my forehead against the subway window. The glass reflected a face that looked older than twenty-nine. I had worked at Onyx for three years because the tips were good and my mother's medication bills were not. I used to be proud that no one could make me cry on shift. Tonight a single word had nearly undone me.

Nina had started as a dishwasher before moving into management. She knew what it was to count coins on a bus and pretend you weren't counting. When the train stopped she waited for me, even though I moved slowly. At the corner deli she bought crackers, bananas, and a carton of milk without asking whether I wanted them. Then she handed me the receipt.

“Pay me back when you want,” she said. “Or don't. But you need dinner before you start solving the world's problems.”

I had forgotten that friendship could be as simple as somebody remembering you were hungry.

At Nina's apartment, I washed my face, borrowed a clean shirt, and sat on her sofa with the television muted. My phone vibrated once more.

A photo arrived from an unknown number. It showed me standing beside Roman's booth, tray in hand, just before I spoke. The angle was high, from the private mezzanine. Beneath it was a message.

Tell Gallagher his father never paid the Rowans what he owed. Page forty-seven proves it.

I stopped breathing.

My father, Eli Rowan, had died seven years earlier in a warehouse fire the Gallagher companies had called an accident. I'd never told Roman my father's name. I hadn't even told David the name of the company that owned the building until last winter.