Chapter 1 - THE MAN BESIDE THE EXIT
The masked attacker raised his gun toward Eleanor Moretti’s chest.
I swung the broken chair leg before he could pull the trigger.
Wood struck bone with a sickening crack.
The gun dropped onto the marble floor and slid beneath a table as the attacker folded over his shattered wrist.
“Touch her again and lose the hand,” I said.
My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
Blood ran from the cut near my temple and soaked the collar of my white blouse. My right palm had split open when I grabbed the jagged chair leg, but the pain had disappeared beneath the pounding of my heart.
Behind me, Eleanor clutched a five year old girl against her black dress.
The child held a crushed yellow flower in one trembling fist.
Around us, wealthy diners hid behind overturned tables. Crystal glasses lay shattered beneath the chandeliers. No one moved to help.
The masked man reached toward the gun.
I brought the chair leg down beside his fingers.
“Try it.”
He stopped.
The restaurant doors flew open.
Six men in dark suits entered first.
The man behind them did not run.
He walked into the destruction with the cold control of someone who had already decided how every person in the room would leave.
Vincent Moretti was taller than I expected. Dark wavy hair. Black tailored suit. No visible weapon.
He did not need one.
Every armed man around him moved according to the smallest shift in his expression.
His eyes found the little girl first.
“Sophie.”
She slipped from Eleanor’s arms and ran toward him.
He caught her against his chest, checked her face, her neck, and her hands, then looked toward his mother.
Eleanor was breathing too quickly.
A bruise darkened her cheek.
Vincent knelt beside her.
“Are you injured?”
“I will survive.”
Only then did he look at me.
His gaze traveled from my bleeding hand to the chair leg and the masked man on the floor.
“Who are you?”
“The only person who did not run.”
His expression did not change, but something sharpened behind his eyes.
One of his men recovered the gun. Another restrained the attacker.
I dropped the chair leg and pressed my injured palm against my apron.
Vincent looked toward the terrified guests.
“Everyone leaves after security records their names.”
No one protested.
Eleanor gripped his sleeve.
“They knew our private route.”
Vincent became still.
Only family and senior security knew Eleanor and Sophie would eat at Belladonna before visiting the lakefront conservatory.
The attackers had arrived before their car.
They knew the table.
They knew the rear exit.
They knew the security rotation changed at three.
Sophie pulled away from her father and pointed toward the restaurant entrance.
“That man told them where Grandma would be.”
Every face turned.
A broad shouldered bodyguard named Dominic Raines stood beside the exit.
He had been the first security officer through the door.
He was also Vincent’s oldest friend.
Dominic’s hand moved inside his jacket.
Three guns aimed at him instantly.
Vincent rose slowly.
“Take your hand out.”
Dominic looked at Sophie.
The child stepped behind her father.
“Vincent, listen to me.”
“Take it out.”
Dominic removed his hand.
He held a black phone.
The screen displayed a live photograph of the restaurant interior taken seconds earlier.
My face appeared in the center.
A red circle surrounded it.
Beneath the image were four words.
THE WAITRESS MUST SURVIVE.
Vincent took the phone.
The message had arrived before the attack began.
He looked toward me.
I stared at the screen.
“I have never seen that phone.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“Someone put it in my vehicle.”
“And you carried it inside without telling me?” Vincent asked.
“I was trying to identify the sender.”
“You knew my mother’s route was compromised.”
“I knew someone expected an incident. I did not know when.”
Eleanor watched him without warmth.
“You let us enter anyway.”
Dominic looked toward her.
“I had men positioned outside.”
“Where were they when the gun was raised?”
His silence answered.
Vincent handed the phone to his security chief.
“Lock Dominic’s access. Take him downstairs.”
Two men approached.
Dominic did not resist.
Before they moved him, he looked directly at me.
“You need to leave Chicago tonight.”
Vincent’s voice remained quiet.
“You do not speak to her.”
Dominic ignored him.
“Brielle Dawson, they did not come for Eleanor.”
I froze.
I had never told anyone in the restaurant my last name.
Vincent heard it too.
“How do you know who she is?”
Dominic glanced toward the masked attacker.
The man on the floor had stopped groaning.
His body had gone completely still.
Foam appeared at the edge of his mask.
One of Vincent’s men checked him.
“Poison capsule.”
The attacker had died before anyone could question him.
Dominic looked back at me.
“Because eleven years ago, her sister died carrying the same yellow flower Sophie is holding.”
I stared at the crushed flower in the child’s fist.
My younger sister, Claire, had carried yellow daisies the night she was murdered.
The police never recovered her body.
They found only one flower beneath an abandoned train platform.
Vincent stepped between Dominic and me.
“What does Brielle’s sister have to do with my family?”
Dominic’s answer made Eleanor stop breathing.
“Claire Dawson was not murdered.”
He looked toward Vincent.
May you like
“She became your wife.”
Continue to the next part: Brielle learns that Vincent’s supposedly dead wife may have been the sister she lost eleven years earlier.
