Chapter 1 - The Woman He Was Supposed to Kill
The first thing I noticed was the gun pointed at my forehead.
The second was Dante Moretti's hand tightening around my wrist.
Rain poured over both of us as we lay in the mud, dangerously close to the edge of a mountain ravine.
Behind us, his black luxury sedan had disappeared into the darkness.
Above us, half a dozen men stood in the headlights of three armored SUVs, their weapons raised.
And beneath my shaking fingers, the most feared mafia boss on the East Coast was bleeding.
"Don't shoot her."
Dante's voice was quiet, but every gun stopped moving.
One of the men stepped forward.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and had a pale scar running from his left eyebrow to his jaw.
"Boss, we received an emergency signal from your vehicle, and when we got here, this woman was—"
"Did I ask you to explain?"
The man went silent.
Dante turned his gray eyes toward me.
"How did you know my brakes were going to fail?"
My mouth opened, but no sound came out.
I'd imagined a thousand possible endings when I jumped into my car to chase him.
Being questioned by an injured mafia boss while surrounded by armed strangers had not been one of them.
"I heard something."
Dante's expression hardened.
"What did you hear?"
"Your wife."
The rain seemed to grow louder.
The man with the scar took another step forward.
"What did you say?"
I swallowed.
"Your wife was at Bellini's tonight with another man."
Dante didn't blink.
"They were talking about your car."
His grip on my wrist loosened.
For a moment, I thought he might faint.
Instead, he sat up straighter.
"Tell me exactly what they said."
I repeated the conversation as closely as I could remember.
The lover's voice.
Vanessa's question about the brakes.
The quiet laughter.
And finally, the sentence I wished I'd never heard.
"By midnight, I'll be a grieving widow."
Something changed in Dante's face.
It wasn't anger.
Anger would have been easier to understand.
This was something colder.
Something that made the men around him exchange nervous glances.
"Marco."
The scarred man immediately straightened.
"Yes, boss."
"Call Dr. Mercer."
"Already done."
"Secure the restaurant."
Marco nodded.
"And Vanessa?"
Dante watched me for another second before answering.
"She is not to know I'm alive."
Marco's eyes widened slightly.
"Understood."
Dante released my wrist.
Only then did I realize how tightly he'd been holding it.
My skin was pale where his fingers had pressed against it.
I looked toward the highway.
"I called 911 before the crash."
Every man turned toward me.
Marco's expression darkened.
"You did what?"
"I called the police because somebody was about to die."
"Do you understand what you've—"
"Marco."
Dante didn't raise his voice.
Marco stopped.
Dante studied me.
"You did the right thing."
I stared at him.
That was not the response I'd expected.
He looked toward the road above.
"Tell the dispatcher where we are, and tell them the driver is alive."
Marco reached for his phone.
Dante continued.
"No one interferes with the ambulance."
"Boss, the police will want statements."
"Then we'll give them statements."
I looked at him in disbelief.
He seemed to notice.
"What?"
"I thought men like you avoided the police."
His mouth twitched, barely.
"Men like me don't usually survive falling off cliffs, either."
Then his face drained of color.
He tried to stand.
His knees buckled.
I caught him before his head struck a rock.
"Dante!"
His eyes closed.
Marco rushed forward.
"Boss!"
I pressed my fingers to Dante's neck.
There was a pulse.
Fast.
Weak.
"He's losing blood."
Marco crouched beside me.
"Where?"
I pulled Dante's torn jacket aside.
A long piece of metal had sliced through his shirt, leaving a deep wound near his ribs.
Blood soaked the fabric.
I pressed both hands against it.
"Give me something clean."
Marco looked at my hands.
"Now!"
Someone handed me a folded medical dressing from an emergency kit.
I pressed it against the wound.
Dante made a low sound but didn't wake up.
"Keep pressure here."
Marco took my place.
I grabbed a second dressing and pressed it over the first.
Rainwater ran down my face.
My arms shook.
I was no doctor.
I had taken a basic first-aid course for restaurant employees three years earlier.
That was the extent of my medical training.
But I knew enough to recognize that Dante needed an ambulance.
Immediately.
The first siren came from somewhere below the mountain.
I almost cried when I heard it.
Then Dante's hand moved.
His fingers closed around mine again.
"Cara."
I froze.
I hadn't told him my name.
His eyes opened a fraction.
"How do you know my name?"
He tried to answer.
Instead, he coughed and winced.
"Don't talk."
He ignored me.
"Bellini's."
I leaned closer.
"What?"
His lips barely moved.
"Your name tag."
For some ridiculous reason, I almost laughed.
The most dangerous man I'd ever met remembered a waitress's name tag.
Then he whispered something that made every trace of humor disappear.
"Don't go home."
My stomach tightened.
"Why?"
Dante opened his eyes.
His voice was almost inaudible.
"Because they'll come for you next."
The ambulance arrived seven minutes later.
I counted every second.
Paramedics descended the slope with rescue equipment while police officers secured the road.
Marco gave them enough information to move quickly.
I stepped aside when the medical team reached Dante.
Blood covered my hands.
My jeans were torn.
Mud clung to my shoes.
For the first time since hearing Vanessa's conversation, I stopped moving.
And the fear finally caught up with me.
A paramedic examined my hands.
"You need treatment, too."
"I'm fine."
"Those cuts don't look fine."
"I'm fine."
He gave me the kind of patient expression reserved for stubborn people.
"What's your name?"
"Cara Fields."
"All right, Cara."
He glanced toward Dante, who was being secured to a rescue stretcher.
"You're lucky you didn't go over the edge with him."
I stared into the ravine.
The car had vanished so completely that I couldn't even see its broken headlights.
Only the torn guardrail remained.
A strip of twisted metal marked the place where an ordinary drive had almost become a murder.
"What happens now?" I whispered.
The paramedic misunderstood.
"To your friend?"
"He's not my friend."
The words sounded strange.
Ten minutes earlier, I had been holding him against my chest while praying he wouldn't die.
Yet I knew almost nothing about him beyond what the newspapers printed.
The paramedic studied me.
"Then whoever he is, he owes you his life."
I watched the stretcher move toward the road.
Somehow, I didn't think debts meant the same thing in Dante Moretti's world.
At the hospital, I made my statement to a detective named Rebecca Shaw.
She was in her early forties, with tired blue eyes and a notebook full of questions.
Unlike Marco, she didn't seem impressed by Dante's reputation.
"You say you overheard a conversation at Bellini's."
"Yes."
"Between Vanessa Moretti and an unidentified man."
"Yes."
"And they specifically discussed disabling her husband's brakes."
I nodded.
"Those were the words."
Detective Shaw stopped writing.
"Did you recognize the man's face?"
"Not clearly."
"His voice?"
"I'd know it if I heard it again."
She leaned back.
"Miss Fields, I need you to understand something."
I waited.
"Accusing someone of attempted murder is serious."
"I watched his car go over a cliff."
"I'm not questioning that."
"Then what are you questioning?"
"Whether someone intentionally caused it."
I stared at her.
She held my gaze.
"That's what the investigation needs to establish."
I looked toward the emergency department doors.
"There's something else."
"What?"
"Vanessa said she'd be a widow by midnight."
Detective Shaw's pen stopped.
For the first time, I saw something other than professional caution in her expression.
"You're certain?"
"I wish I wasn't."
She closed her notebook.
"Don't discuss this with anyone until we have more information."
I gave a nervous laugh.
"That's going to be difficult."
"Why?"
"Because Mr. Moretti's men are standing outside the door."
Shaw looked toward the hallway.
Her expression tightened.
Before she could respond, her phone rang.
She checked the screen.
"Excuse me."
She walked away to answer.
I sat alone beneath the harsh fluorescent lights.
On the opposite wall, a clock read 11:43 p.m.
Seventeen minutes until midnight.
The time Vanessa had chosen for her husband's death.
My phone vibrated.
I expected a message from my manager demanding to know why I'd abandoned my shift.
Instead, the screen displayed an unknown number.
The message contained only five words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LET HIM DIE.
My fingers went numb.
Then another message appeared.
WE KNOW WHERE YOUR MOTHER LIVES.
I couldn't breathe.
My mother had died when I was nineteen.
There was only one person in the world who knew that I still kept her old apartment in my name.
My younger brother.
And he'd been missing for six months.
I stood so quickly that my chair scraped across the floor.
Detective Shaw returned.
"Miss Fields?"
I showed her the messages.
She read them twice.
Then she looked at me with an expression I would never forget.
"Who told you your mother was dead?"
I frowned.
"What?"
Shaw's next words changed everything.
May you like
"Because according to the records attached to your mother's name, someone visited her this morning."
And before I could ask what she meant, every light in the hospital corridor went out.
