Chapter 1 - The Price of Knowing My Name

I stared at him.

For one second, I forgot how to breathe.

“That isn’t public,” I said.

“No.”

“My landlord told me yesterday.”

“I know.”

Rosie was pretending to polish the coffee machine, but the rag in her hand had stopped moving. Dominic’s guards were still positioned around the diner like dark punctuation marks.

I leaned closer. “How do you know where I live?”

His expression didn’t change, but the answer took longer than I expected.

“Because the men who tried to kill me were looking for the person who pulled me from that car.”

A cold line moved down my spine.

Dominic slid the cream card toward me, but I left it between us.

“I had people find you before they did,” he continued. “Your address, your job, your schedule. Your daughter’s school.”

My chair scraped backward so sharply that every head in the diner turned.

“You stay away from my daughter.”

His guards shifted again.

Dominic lifted one hand without looking at them. They stopped.

“I have never gone near her.” His voice remained low. “No one working for me has spoken to her. I needed to know whether anyone else had.”

“You don’t get to investigate my child and call that protection.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

That answer disarmed me more than an argument would have.

He took a folded sheet of paper from inside his jacket and placed it beside the card.

It was a photograph from a traffic camera.

The image showed the burning wreck from three weeks earlier. Rain streaked the lens. I recognized myself near the curb, bent over the injured man I had dragged from the driver’s side.

Across the street stood another figure.

A man in a pale raincoat.

Watching us.

My mouth went dry.

“I never saw him,” I whispered.

“You were trying to keep me alive.”

Dominic tapped the corner of the photograph. “He stayed for ninety seconds after the second explosion. Then he disappeared.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know yet.”

For the first time since he had entered the diner, I believed him completely.

That frightened me most.

My phone vibrated in my apron.

I pulled it out.

Three missed calls from my neighbor, Mrs. Alvarez.

Then a text.

EMMA, CALL ME. SOME MAN WAS ASKING WHICH APARTMENT IS YOURS.

The blood drained from my face.

Dominic saw it.

“What happened?”

I hated that I answered.

“A man came to my building.”

The quiet around him changed.

Not louder.

Sharper.

“Your daughter?”

“With Mrs. Alvarez.”

He stood.

“So am I.”

“I didn’t ask you to come.”

“No.” He buttoned his jacket. “But you saved my life without asking me either.”

I should have refused.

I should have called the police, grabbed Rosie’s tire iron, done anything that did not involve climbing into a black SUV with Dominic Salvatore.

Instead, seven minutes later, I was in the back seat beside him while rain slid across armored glass.

I called Mrs. Alvarez.

She answered on the first ring.

“Emma, honey, Lily is fine. She’s eating cereal.”

My entire body loosened by half an inch.

“Who was the man?”

“I don’t know. Tall. Gray cap. Said he was from property management, but when I asked for identification, he left.”

Property management.

Dominic looked at me.

He had heard every word.

“My landlord sold the building last month,” I said.

“To North Briar Holdings,” he replied.

I turned slowly.

“You knew that too?”

“I checked the company after I found out about the rent increase.”

“And?”

His jaw tightened.

“It was formed six weeks ago by an attorney who has represented my uncle for fifteen years.”

The SUV suddenly felt too small.

“Your uncle?”

“Vincent Salvatore.”

The name meant nothing to me.

The way Dominic said it meant everything.

We stopped outside my building twelve minutes later. One of his men entered first. I hated it. I hated all of it—the black vehicles, the quiet orders, the knowledge that strangers with weapons were checking the hallway where Lily kept her chalk drawings taped beside our door.

But when Mrs. Alvarez opened her apartment and my seven-year-old daughter ran into my arms wearing purple pajamas and one mismatched sock, I held her so tightly she squeaked.

“Mom, you’re crushing me.”

“Good.” My voice broke. “That means you’re real.”

Over her shoulder, Lily noticed Dominic standing near the stairs.

Her eyes narrowed with the fearless suspicion only children and very old women seemed to possess.

“Who’s that?”

I looked at him.

For once, the city’s most feared man appeared uncertain.

“He’s someone I helped,” I said.

Lily studied him for another second.

Then she looked back at me.

“Does he need help again?”

Dominic’s gaze met mine.

In that moment, I understood something I had missed in the diner.

He had not come to pay a debt.

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He had come because the night I pulled him from the fire had connected my life to his in a way neither of us could simply undo.

And somewhere in the city, a man in a pale raincoat already knew it.