[COMPLETED] She Walked Into the Fire and Into a Mafia War

By noon, Dominic had moved Rosa out of the hospital.

The official explanation was concern about press attention. The real reason was simpler: someone had infiltrated the floor with a poisoned IV, and Dominic no longer trusted a building simply because it had cameras and badges.

Rosa was transferred to a physician-supervised suite inside a private residence in Lincoln Park. Sadie went with her because Dominic did not ask this time. He stated that the sniper had not been identified and left the decision sitting between them like a loaded weapon.

Sadie agreed on one condition.

“I need clothes.”

Dominic looked at the borrowed sweater hanging from her shoulders. “Done.”

“My clothes.”

“Your apartment is a crime scene.”

“I have a locker at the diner.”

He stared at her.

“You can send your army,” she said, “but then everyone I work with will assume I’m either dead or dating a drug dealer.”

Carmine coughed into his fist.

Dominic ignored him. “I’ll take you.”

The diner looked aggressively ordinary after twenty-four hours of private clinics, armed escorts, and attempted murder. Coffee burned in glass pots. A cook shouted at a dishwasher. The lunch crowd complained about eggs and parking.

Sadie’s manager, Len, emerged from the kitchen and stopped when he saw Dominic and two men in dark coats behind her.

“Sadie,” he said carefully. “You okay?”

“Fantastic.”

Len looked at her bandaged hands. “You didn’t answer your phone.”

“It was shot.”

He blinked.

Sadie walked past him before explanations became necessary.

Her locker contained a spare T-shirt, jeans, cheap sneakers, and the nursing textbook she had never managed to throw away. While she packed, one of the waitresses, Kayla, hurried into the back room.

“Girl, what happened?”

“Long story.”

Kayla lowered her voice. “Some guy came looking for you this morning.”

Sadie stopped.

“What guy?”

“Maybe forty. Work jacket. Burn on his neck. Said he left a wallet here and you served him.”

“I wasn’t working this morning.”

“I know. He got weird when I said that.”

Sadie felt cold.

“What did he look like?”

Kayla described a narrow face, pale eyes, and a crescent-shaped burn below the right ear.

Dominic appeared in the doorway before Sadie finished asking questions. He had clearly heard enough.

“Did he touch anything?” he asked.

Kayla’s eyes widened.

“Think,” Sadie said.

“He sat at booth nine. Ordered coffee. Left when Len started asking questions.”

They walked to booth nine.

A busboy had already cleared the cup, but a crumpled receipt remained on the floor beneath the table. Sadie bent, then winced because her hands could not grip it.

Dominic picked it up.

On the back, someone had written three words in blue ink.

SOUTH CANAL. 4 PM.

Carmine arrived from outside and examined it.

“Could be a meet.”

“Or bait,” Sadie said.

Dominic studied the receipt. “Either way, he wanted her to find it.”

“Why me?”

“Because he knows you are under my protection now.”

Sadie hated the phrase.

Kayla hovered several feet away, pretending not to listen.

Dominic turned to one of his guards. “Get everyone in this diner photographed discreetly. Anyone who has been here more than twice this week, I want names.”

Len began to protest from behind the counter. Dominic looked at him once, and Len decided the coffee machine required his full attention.

Back in the SUV, Carmine received a message from the team following Victor and Bellini.

“They separated,” he said. “Victor went to his office. Bellini drove to a storage facility near Cicero. Unit is rented to a company called MidLake Restoration.”

Sadie looked up.

“Restoration?”

Carmine nodded.

She thought about the smell in the brownstone. Chemical, sharp, hotter than ordinary smoke.

“What does the company restore?”

Carmine searched.

“Fire and water damage.”

Dominic’s eyes narrowed.

The coincidence was too clean to ignore.

At three thirty, they did not go to South Canal. Dominic sent surveillance instead. The burned man appeared at 3:58, waited beneath an abandoned rail bridge, and smoked two cigarettes.

Then another car arrived.

The passenger who stepped out was not Bellini.

It was Marco Moretti, nephew of Salvatore Moretti and one of the men Dominic’s organization had been hunting since Rosa’s fire.

Carmine showed Dominic the live camera feed.

“So the Morettis are involved,” he said.

Sadie watched the screen.

The burned man did not greet Marco like an ally. He handed him an envelope, stepped back, and kept his right hand near his jacket.

“That doesn’t look friendly,” she said.

Dominic watched more closely.

Marco opened the envelope.

His face changed.

Then he looked directly toward the hidden camera.