Part 2 “Mr. Romano, there’s blood on the basement stairs.”
**Part 2**
“Mr. Romano, there’s blood on the basement stairs.”
The bar went silent enough for Grace to hear the rain against the windows. Dominic did not flinch. Whatever concern she had seen vanished behind the cold expression that had made dangerous men fear him for years.
“Lock the front door. Nobody leaves.”
Two men moved. Grace’s stomach tightened. She had needed a paycheck, not a crime scene.
“I think I’ve changed my mind about the job.”
Dominic stepped into her path and left several feet between them. “You can quit tomorrow. Tonight, walking outside could be worse than staying.”
“Who exactly are you?”
Before he could answer, the customer who had mocked her stood.
“This is ridiculous. I’m leaving.”
Dominic barely looked at him. “Sit down, Victor.”
The man froze. Ten minutes ago he had been laughing at her. Now his face had gone pale because four quiet words had been spoken. He sat.
Grace understood. The suit, the armed security, the frightened customers were not decorations. Dominic was not simply the owner of Romano’s. He was the reason everyone behaved differently inside it.
“You’re mafia,” she whispered.
His eyes settled on hers. “Does that change your answer about needing the job?”
“It changes several things.”
A metallic click came from beneath the music system. Grace turned. Years of restaurant work had taught her every ordinary noise a bar could make. Ice machines. Compressors. Bottles settling.
This was not one of them.
“Wait.” One of Dominic’s men was reaching beneath the counter. She grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t touch that.”
Every eye turned.
“Move away.”
Dominic approached slowly. Beneath a loose wooden panel, barely visible beside a bundle of wires, sat a small device with a blinking green light.
Minutes later it was identified as a hidden transmitter—planted to capture private conversations. Someone had gotten close enough to spy on him. From inside his own establishment.
Victor began protesting. “You can’t seriously think one of us—”
“I haven’t said what I think.”
That silenced him again.
Grace noticed the elderly cleaner trembling by the kitchen doorway. While Dominic’s men questioned customers, she brought the woman a chair and a glass of water.
“Slow breaths. You’re okay.”
Dominic watched from across the room. Grace had just discovered she was standing in a mafia boss’s bar during a security breach. She was comforting someone more frightened than herself. Kindness in his world usually arrived with an invoice. Hers did not.
Twenty minutes later the team confirmed there was no injured person in the basement. The blood on the stairs was animal blood, placed there as a distraction. The real target had been the transmitter. Someone wanted Dominic’s attention downstairs while something happened upstairs.
“So I accidentally helped you,” Grace said.
“You noticed what trained men missed.”
“Waitressing teaches you to notice things.”
“Apparently my security team should start carrying trays.”
She almost smiled, then caught herself. Dominic did smile—barely—and every man nearby looked as if they had witnessed an eclipse.
He led her toward a quieter booth. She stiffened.
“I’m not going anywhere private with you.”
Instead of being offended, he pulled out a chair in the open bar. “Then we talk here.”
Powerful men in Grace’s experience treated boundaries as challenges. Dominic treated hers as instructions.
“Why did you really take this job?”
“Because my old restaurant decided I didn’t fit their image. Because rent doesn’t care about humiliation. Because I’m tired of being told I should be grateful for scraps.”
His jaw tightened. “Name the restaurant.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t need revenge. I need work.”
Something shifted behind his eyes. She was not asking him to rescue her. She was asking for the chance to stand on her own.
He took a thick envelope from his jacket and set it on the table. She did not touch it.
“What’s that?”
“An advance.”
“I haven’t worked an hour.”
“Then earn it.”
She pushed it back. “Pay me after my shift.”
He stared at her for several seconds, then quietly returned it to his pocket.
“Six o’clock tomorrow.”
“If I come back.”
“You’ll come back.”
“That confidence must be exhausting.”
This time his smile was unmistakable.
Then Grace saw something through the rain-streaked window. A dark SUV had been parked across the street since she arrived. Its headlights flashed once, then twice.
Dominic followed her gaze. The warmth left his face.
“Get away from the window.”
The SUV pulled slowly into traffic. His security chief hurried over with a photograph found beside the hidden transmitter.
Dominic went completely still.
Grace saw it before he could turn it over. A picture of her entering Romano’s less than an hour earlier, taken from across the street.
Written beneath it were six words.
*Your new waitress won’t last either.*
