Chapter 1 - The Debt She Never Asked a Mafia King to Pay

Sadie stared through the narrow gap in the door at the two men in the hallway. The larger one had introduced the problem as if it were a courtesy: his employer was the son of the woman she had dragged from the fire, and he wanted to thank her. Sadie looked down at her bandaged hands and almost laughed. Gratitude did not usually arrive in tailored suits with shoulders wide enough to block an apartment corridor.

“I already told you,” she said. “I don’t want anything.”

The man with the flattened nose studied her for a moment. “My name is Carmine. You can tell Mr. Castile that yourself.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

A third voice came from farther down the hall. “Then I’ll come to you.”

The two men shifted aside. Dominic Castile walked toward the door without hurry, wearing the same charcoal calm he had worn in the photographs reporters used when they wrote about labor disputes, political fundraisers, and construction contracts no one wanted to examine too closely. He was taller than Sadie expected. What unsettled her was not his size but the stillness in his face.

“You saved my mother,” he said.

Sadie kept the chain on the door. “I heard.”

“You left before anyone could treat you.”

“I’m fine.”

His gaze lowered to her swollen fingers. “No, you aren’t.”

Before Sadie could answer, a sharp crack split the apartment. The single window behind her burst inward. Glass sprayed across the mattress. Dominic moved before she understood what had happened. He slammed the door with his shoulder, snapping the cheap chain, and dragged her to the floor as a second round punched through the wall above the kitchen counter.

Carmine and the other guard were suddenly inside, weapons drawn.

Sadie’s ears rang. “Was that—”

“Yes,” Dominic said. “Someone just tried to kill you.”

The hallway erupted with shouted orders. Dominic kept one hand at the back of Sadie’s neck, holding her below the window line while Carmine checked the fire escape and called downstairs. Sadie’s breathing turned shallow. She had entered the burning house because someone needed help. She had not imagined that choice would follow her home carrying a rifle.

Dominic looked at the ruined glass, then at her. “Now you understand why I came.”

“You brought this to me.”

“No. You became visible when you pulled my mother out. The people who burned that house need to know what you saw.”

“I saw smoke.”

“They don’t know that.”

Carmine returned from the bedroom. “Shooter’s gone. Rooftop across the alley. Spotter saw a gray sedan leaving west.”

Dominic stood. “We move.”

Sadie pushed herself upright. “I’m not being kidnapped.”

His eyes hardened, but his voice stayed level. “You can walk out with me, or you can stay in an apartment that has already been ranged by a shooter. Those are your choices tonight.”

She hated that he was right.

Ten minutes later, Sadie sat in the back of a black SUV with a blanket around her shoulders while Chicago slid past in wet streaks. Dominic sat opposite her. Carmine spoke quietly into a phone from the front seat.

Sadie kept her injured hands in her lap. “If your mother is safe, why would anyone care about me?”

“Because the fire was supposed to leave no witnesses.”

“I didn’t see the person who started it.”

“Again, they don’t know that.”

She watched him. “And you don’t believe me either.”

Dominic’s expression changed by less than a fraction. “I believe you went into a burning building for a stranger. That makes you either honest or insane.”

“Maybe both.”

For the first time, something almost like humor touched his mouth.

They did not take her to a mansion or a warehouse. The SUV stopped beneath a discreet medical building near Streeterville. A private physician treated the burns on Sadie’s hands, listened to her lungs, and told her she had been lucky not to suffer more serious smoke damage. Dominic waited outside the room.

When the doctor finished wrapping her palms, Sadie found Dominic standing at the end of the corridor.

“My mother is awake,” he said. “She asked about you.”

Sadie’s anger softened despite herself. “Is she okay?”

“She will be.”

“Then tell her I’m glad.”

“You can tell her in the morning.”

Sadie shook her head. “I have work.”

“You cannot hold a coffee mug.”

“I still need the job.”

Dominic studied her as if the idea offended him. “Your employer docked your pay after you were injured saving someone?”

“My employer runs a diner, not a charity.”

His jaw tightened. “You won’t be going back tomorrow.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“No,” he said. “The man who fired through your window did.”

Carmine approached with a phone in his hand. The look on his face changed the air.

“We pulled the building camera,” he said. “The sedan from the alley was used in another job last month.”

“Moretti?” Dominic asked.

Carmine hesitated.

“No,” he said. “It’s registered to a shell company that contracts security for us.”

Sadie saw Dominic go perfectly still.

Carmine handed him the screen. “Whoever tried to kill her may not be coming from the other family.”

Dominic looked at Sadie, and for the first time since he arrived at her apartment, certainty left his face.

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The fire had started a war.

The bullet through Sadie’s window suggested the enemy might already be standing inside Dominic’s own walls.