PART 2 Calling the most ruthless mafia boss in New York “baby” was not part of my closing-shift duties
PART 2
For one irrational second, I considered pretending I had not heard him.
The four men surrounding Roman Gallagher had gone perfectly still. Their hands remained beneath their jackets, their expressions unreadable. One wrong movement from me, and the closing shift at the Onyx Club was going to become the kind of story people whispered about for years.
Roman waited.
His gray eyes held mine with unnerving patience.
“Say it again,” he repeated.
My fingers tightened around the empty tray.
“I believe once was already too many.”
One of the bodyguards glanced away, but not before I caught the brief twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Roman’s smirk widened.
“Probably.”
He lifted one hand.
The movement was small, almost lazy, but all four men immediately removed their hands from inside their jackets. The tension in the room eased by a fraction.
Roman picked up his bourbon.
“Still,” he said, “I asked nicely.”
My exhaustion collided with my common sense.
I had spent the entire evening apologizing to impatient customers, carrying trays for people who never looked at my face, and pretending not to notice my phone vibrating with demands from a man who had contributed exactly nineteen dollars to our household expenses that month.
Something inside me simply gave up.
I leaned slightly closer.
“Here you go,” I said, carefully separating every syllable. “Ba-by.”
For half a heartbeat, nobody reacted.
Then the man seated to Roman’s right coughed into his fist.
Roman looked down at his drink, his shoulders shifting with what might have been a silent laugh.
When he lifted his eyes again, the danger in them had not disappeared, but it had changed. It was less like a blade pointed at me and more like a locked door he had briefly allowed me to glimpse behind.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I tapped the brass badge pinned above my vest pocket.
“Mara.”
“I can read.”
“Then we’re both doing better than expected tonight.”
That earned me another strangled sound from the man beside him.
Roman’s gaze moved to my full name engraved beneath the larger letters.
MARA ELLIS.
His expression changed so subtly that I might have imagined it.
“Ellis,” he said.
“Yes.”
He studied me for another moment.
Then my phone buzzed again.
The sound seemed impossibly loud in the quiet lounge.
Roman glanced at my apron pocket.
“Persistent.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Boyfriend?”
“That is none of your business.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”
His answer surprised me enough that I forgot to be afraid for a second.
Most men who asked intrusive questions behaved as though refusal were an insult. Roman merely lifted his glass and took a measured sip.
His eyes dropped to the leather-bound ledger in front of him.
“You’re limping.”
I stiffened.
“I’m working.”
“That wasn’t an accusation.”
“My shoes are cheap.”
Roman looked toward the polished black Oxfords that had been pinching my toes since five that afternoon.
“Buy better shoes.”
“With what?”
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth.
Roman’s men went silent again.
He did not appear offended. If anything, he looked thoughtful.
“With the money your employer should be paying you.”
“The shoes are not my employer’s fault.”
“What is?”
“Are you conducting an employee survey?”
“I might be.”
“Then you should know the staff coffee tastes like burned carpet.”
The man to Roman’s right finally laughed.
It was a short, startled sound, immediately silenced when Roman turned his head.
“What?” the man said. “She’s right.”
Roman looked back at me.
“Anything else?”
“Yes. Booth Four has been sitting here for forty-seven minutes after last call.”
The bodyguard’s smile disappeared.
Roman checked his watch.
“Forty-three.”
“You were served four minutes before last call.”
“That sounds like an argument based on technicalities.”
“It sounds like an argument made by someone who has to polish every glass after you leave.”
Roman set down his bourbon.
“I like her,” the laughing bodyguard announced.
“No one asked you, Luca,” Roman said.
Luca raised both hands in surrender.
I shifted the tray to my other arm.
“Was there anything else, Mr. Gallagher?”
Roman looked at the ledger.
“Yes.”
I followed his gaze despite myself.
The open page contained a series of handwritten figures divided into columns. Most of them meant nothing to me, but one line had been underlined twice.
A vendor code appeared beside two identical payments made six days apart.
I frowned.
Roman noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You looked at the page.”
“I was looking at the glass.”
“You were looking at the ledger.”
I glanced toward the other men.
“I also enjoy continued employment.”
Roman closed the cover halfway.
“No one is going to fire you for recognizing numbers.”
“My manager might fire me for reading a private document.”
“Your manager is currently pretending not to watch us from behind the service bar.”
I turned.
Tessa immediately lowered her head and became intensely interested in rearranging cocktail napkins.
Roman leaned back.
“What did you see?”
I should have walked away.
Instead, I looked again.
“Those two payments.”
“What about them?”
“They’re the same.”
“Very observant.”
“Not just the amount. The invoice number.”
Roman’s expression sharpened.
I pointed without touching the ledger.
“The first payment ends in three-one-seven-eight. So does the second. The vendor code is identical, but one entry says refrigeration maintenance and the other says electrical inspection.”
Luca leaned over the table.
Roman stopped him with one look.
“You noticed that in three seconds?” Roman asked me.
“I spent two years studying accounting.”
“Did you graduate?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“That also falls under none of your business.”
His eyes remained on me.
I released a tired breath.
“My mother got sick. Tuition became less important than rent.”
“And after?”
“After she died, there were bills.”
The words came out flatter than I intended.
Roman did not offer the soft, automatic apology people usually gave when they learned about my mother. He simply nodded, as though acknowledging that grief did not become smaller because strangers lowered their voices around it.
“Do you still work with numbers?” he asked.
“I balance the register.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because restaurants hire people without degrees. Accounting firms usually don’t.”
Roman reopened the ledger.
“Look again.”
“I’m not touching that.”
“You don’t have to.”
He turned the book toward me.
I hesitated before leaning closer.
The ledger appeared to record expenses for the Onyx Club and several related businesses. Food deliveries. Repairs. Security systems. Liquor distributors. Cleaning contracts.
Nothing openly criminal.
Nothing that explained why four armed men were sitting around it at two in the morning.
I scanned the page.
“There,” I said.
Roman followed my finger.
“Another one?”
“Same vendor code. Different invoice number, but the spacing is wrong.”
Luca frowned. “Numbers have spacing?”
“When data is exported from accounting software, it follows a consistent format. This entry was typed manually.”
Roman’s face became unreadable.
“How much?”
I added the three entries in my head.
“Twenty-eight thousand four hundred dollars.”
Luca stopped smiling.
One of the other men leaned forward, but Roman closed the ledger.
“Enough.”
I straightened.
“I should finish cleaning.”
Roman took a white card from his shirt pocket and placed it beside the cocktail napkin.
There was no logo, only a name and telephone number embossed in black.
ROMAN GALLAGHER.
“Come to my office tomorrow at eleven.”
I stared at the card.
“I work tomorrow night.”
“Eleven is not night.”
“I also sleep.”
“I’ll pay for your time.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Look at a set of records.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why?”
“Because someone has been stealing from my businesses.”
The directness of his answer caught me off guard.
“You have accountants.”
“I do.”
“And none of them noticed?”
“That is the question.”
I looked at the ledger, then at the four men.
“Is this legal?”
Luca shifted in his seat, offended on Roman’s behalf.
Roman merely said, “The records belong to restaurants, clubs, and shipping companies that file taxes like every other business in New York.”
“That was a very polished answer.”
“I employ polished attorneys.”
“I don’t want to become involved in anything dangerous.”
“Then don’t.”
I blinked.
Roman tapped the card once.
“Come to the office. Bring someone if it makes you more comfortable. Review the employment agreement before you look at a single page. If you decide to leave, you leave.”
“No consequences?”
“Disappointment.”
“That sounds survivable.”
“For most people.”
The smirk returned, but his voice remained calm.
“You found an error in seconds that three professionals missed. I want to know whether it was an accident.”
“And if it wasn’t?”
“Then I want to know how much has been taken.”
The practical part of my mind began calculating.
Electricity was overdue. Our kitchen contained half a box of cereal, mustard, and three eggs. My bank balance was low enough that opening the app had started to feel like a personal attack.
“How much?” I asked.
“For one day?”
“Yes.”
“Two thousand.”
I nearly dropped the tray.
Luca looked pleased by my reaction.
“You are either generous or extremely suspicious,” I said.
“Usually both.”
“I want it in writing.”
Roman’s eyes warmed with something close to approval.
“Good.”
“And I will not alter records.”
“Agreed.”
“I will not move money.”
“Agreed.”
“I will not lie to the police, tax authorities, auditors, or anyone else.”
Luca raised an eyebrow.
Roman did not.
“Agreed.”
“And nobody calls me baby.”
Roman lifted his bourbon.
“I make no promises about that.”
I stared at him.
His mouth curved.
“I’m joking, Mara.”
The fact that Roman Gallagher felt the need to clarify a joke was somehow more unsettling than the joke itself.
I took the card.
“I haven’t said yes.”
“You haven’t thrown it away.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No,” he said. “But it’s closer.”
When I finally returned to the service bar, Tessa grabbed my wrist and pulled me behind the espresso machine.
“What did he say?”
“That someone is stealing from him.”
Her face went pale.
“And?”
“He wants me to look at his accounts.”
“Mara.”
“I know.”
“You cannot go anywhere alone with Roman Gallagher.”
“He said I could bring someone.”
“Bring the National Guard.”
I slipped the card into my pocket.
“You were watching the whole time.”
“I was preparing to call for help.”
“You were reorganizing napkins.”
“They were tactical napkins.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
It came out quietly, but it felt like the first real laugh I had produced in weeks.
At 2:37, Booth Four finally emptied.
Roman put on his charcoal jacket while Luca and the others moved toward the private elevator. Before following them, he stopped at the bar.
Tessa immediately became very busy with a receipt printer.
Roman placed several folded bills beneath his untouched cocktail napkin.
“For the shoes,” he said.
“I don’t accept personal gifts from customers.”
“It’s a tip.”
“It’s too much.”
“Then divide it with the staff.”
“That is still too much.”
He considered me.
“Do you always argue with people trying to help you?”
“Only when the help comes with unclear conditions.”
“There are no conditions.”
“Then why?”
His gaze dropped briefly to my shoes.
“Because working in pain doesn’t make the work more honorable.”
The words struck somewhere deeper than I expected.
Before I could answer, he walked toward the elevator.
The doors closed behind him.
Tessa hurried over and unfolded the bills.
Five hundred dollars.
She stared at me.
“I’m buying tactical napkins made of silk.”
I divided the money between every employee still working, including the dishwasher who had left thirty minutes earlier.
I kept fifty dollars.
Enough for groceries.
Not enough to make me feel purchased.
My phone contained seventeen messages when I finally checked it.
The last one was from David.
DON’T BOTHER COMING HOME IF YOU DIDN’T GET THE MONEY.
I read the sentence twice.
Then I placed my phone facedown and finished polishing the glasses.
By the time I reached our apartment in Queens, the sun was beginning to turn the sky above the buildings a bruised purple.
Our third-floor walk-up smelled like old cooking oil and someone’s overly floral laundry detergent. I climbed the stairs slowly, every muscle in my body protesting.
David was awake.
He sat on the sofa in sweatpants, playing a video game with the sound low. An empty delivery container rested on the coffee table.
He did not look at me when I entered.
“Where have you been?”
“At work.”
“You finished an hour ago.”
“The subway stopped twice.”
He paused the game.
“Did you pay the electric bill?”
“No.”
David finally looked at me.
“Why not?”
“Because there isn’t enough money.”
“You got paid Friday.”
“So did you.”
His expression hardened.
“My check was short.”
“Your check has been short for four months.”
“That isn’t my fault.”
“No. Nothing ever is.”
I removed my shoes and nearly sighed from the relief.
David’s eyes narrowed.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Everything hurts.”
“I asked you to bring food.”
I looked at the delivery container.
“You ordered food.”
“That was hours ago.”
The exhaustion that had dulled my mind all evening suddenly cleared.
I saw the apartment as though I were entering it for the first time.
The dishes I had washed before leaving were back in the sink. David’s socks lay beside the coffee table. The envelope containing the electric bill had been opened, but the overdue notice beneath it remained untouched.
On the shelf beside the television sat a new wireless headset.
“How much did that cost?”
David glanced at it.
“It was on sale.”
“How much?”
“A hundred and twenty.”
I stared at him.
“You said your check was short.”
“I needed it for work.”
“You answer customer service calls from the kitchen table.”
“The old headset was cutting out.”
“So you bought a new one while I’m choosing between electricity and groceries?”
“You spend money too.”
“On what?”
“Coffee.”
“I drink the free coffee at work.”
“Shoes, then.”
I looked down at my swollen feet.
David did too.
Neither of us spoke.
Something inside me became very quiet.
Not angry.
Finished.
“I need you to leave,” I said.
He laughed once.
“What?”
“This isn’t working.”
“You’re tired.”
“I am. But that isn’t why.”
He stood.
“Mara, stop being dramatic.”
“I have paid the rent for seven months. I buy the groceries. I cover the bills. You use my debit card without asking, and when I say no, you call me selfish.”
“I was going to pay you back.”
“You always say that.”
“Because I am.”
“With what?”
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
I picked up the headset and placed it in his hands.
“You can take this with you.”
His face changed.
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“Because I asked you to pay one bill?”
“Because I’ve spent two years feeling guilty whenever I cannot give you something you never tried to earn.”
David’s jaw tightened.
“You think you’re better than me now?”
“No.”
I surprised myself with the truth of that answer.
“I think I forgot I was allowed to expect better for myself.”
For a few seconds, he looked wounded rather than angry.
That almost weakened me.
Almost.
Then his gaze dropped to the white card protruding from my apron pocket.
He pulled it out before I could stop him.
His face drained of color.
“Where did you get this?”
I took the card back.
“At work.”
“Why do you have Roman Gallagher’s number?”
The alarm in his voice was too immediate.
Not curiosity.
Recognition.
“You know who he is?”
“Everyone knows who he is.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
David stepped away.
“I’ve heard the name.”
“You looked terrified.”
“I’m not terrified.”
“Then why are your hands shaking?”
He curled them into fists.
“Mara, stay away from him.”
“Why?”
“Because people like that don’t help people like us.”
“People like us?”
“Normal people.”
“You never answered my question.”
He looked toward the window.
The first morning light traced a pale line across his face.
“I made a delivery to one of his offices once.”
“What kind of delivery?”
“Documents.”
“For your job?”
“Yes.”
“You work in customer service.”
“It was before that.”
“When?”
“A long time ago.”
I waited.
David’s expression closed.
“You’re twisting this into something it isn’t.”
“Then explain it.”
“I don’t have to explain every job I’ve ever had.”
“No,” I said. “But you do have to leave.”
He stared at me, perhaps waiting for me to withdraw the words.
I did not.
He packed one duffel bag and called his brother.
Before walking out, he paused in the doorway.
“Gallagher will use you.”
“Maybe.”
“And when he’s done, he’ll forget you existed.”
“That is still not a reason for you to stay.”
The door shut behind him.
I locked it.
Then I sat on the kitchen floor because my legs would no longer hold me.
I expected grief to arrive first.
Instead, relief did.
It moved through me slowly, mixed with guilt and fear and a strange emptiness. The apartment was suddenly too quiet, but it was also the first silence in years that did not feel like punishment.
I slept for three hours.
At ten fifteen, I woke, showered, and put on the only business clothes I owned: black trousers, a cream blouse, and a navy blazer that had belonged to my mother.
The sleeves were slightly too short.
I wore it anyway.
Roman’s office occupied three floors of a limestone building in Lower Manhattan. There was no Gallagher name above the entrance. A small brass plaque read GALLAGHER HOSPITALITY GROUP.
The lobby contained pale stone floors, quiet music, and a security desk staffed by two women who looked far more professional than the armed men at Booth Four.
One of them checked my identification.
“Mr. Gallagher is expecting you, Ms. Ellis.”
The elevator required a key card.
When the doors opened on the twenty-first floor, Luca was waiting.
He looked less intimidating in daylight, though only slightly. His navy suit was perfectly fitted, and a faint scar crossed one eyebrow.
“Baby,” he greeted me.
I stopped.
Luca raised both hands.
“Roman said nobody was allowed to call you that. I wanted to see whether he meant it.”
“Did he?”
A voice came from the open conference room.
“He did.”
Roman stood beside a long table covered in neatly arranged folders. He wore a dark suit and a gray tie. In daylight, the slight bend in his nose was more noticeable, as were the tired shadows beneath his eyes.
Luca cleared his throat.
“I’ll be downstairs.”
“You’ll be in another building,” Roman said.
Luca smiled at me and left.
A woman in her early thirties sat at the conference table, reading a contract. She had Roman’s gray eyes but none of his severity. Her auburn hair was pulled into a loose knot.
“This is my sister, Maeve Gallagher,” Roman said. “She oversees our restaurants and charitable foundation.”
Maeve stood and offered her hand.
“I’ve been trying to convince my brother that frightening potential employees is not an effective hiring strategy.”
“I wasn’t frightened,” I said.
Roman looked at me.
Maeve smiled.
“She lies politely. That’s useful.”
A second man introduced himself as Julian Park, outside counsel for the hospitality group. He reviewed the agreement with me line by line.
It was legitimate.
One day of consulting work. Two thousand dollars. No access to personal accounts. No obligation to continue. Full protection for reporting suspected misconduct.
I signed.
Roman placed a cup of coffee beside me.
I took one sip and looked at him.
“This is much better than the staff coffee.”
“I conducted an employee survey.”
For the next two hours, I reviewed expense reports.
Roman did not hover. He sat across from me answering emails while Maeve organized files and Julian made calls from the adjoining office.
The records revealed a pattern.
Maintenance invoices had been duplicated across three restaurants and the Onyx Club. Each payment was small enough to avoid senior review. Together, they totaled more than four hundred thousand dollars over eighteen months.
The vendor was registered as Aster Facilities Management.
“Aster doesn’t exist,” Maeve said after checking the state database.
“It exists on paper,” I replied. “But its address belongs to a mailbox service.”
Roman came to stand beside me.
“Who approved the invoices?”
“Several managers.”
“Then several people are involved.”
“Not necessarily.”
I pulled up the authorization logs.
“Look at the approval times. Most were entered between four and five in the morning. The managers’ accounts may have been compromised.”
Roman leaned closer.
He smelled faintly of cedar and coffee rather than cigar smoke.
“Can you identify the device?”
“Your technology department can.”
“They already tried.”
“And?”
“The access appeared legitimate.”
I studied the entries again.
“Then whoever did this understood your system.”
Maeve folded her arms.
“An employee.”
“Or a former employee.”
Roman’s gaze moved to a closed archive box at the end of the table.
“What?” I asked.
He did not answer immediately.
Then he opened the box.
Inside were old accounting books, employee records, and black-and-white photographs from what appeared to be a shipping office.
Roman removed one file.
The label read NATHAN ELLIS.
My father’s name.
The room seemed to tilt.
I did not touch the file.
“Why do you have that?”
Roman watched my face carefully.
“Your father worked for mine.”
“No.”
“He did.”
“My father sold insurance.”
“He did that later.”
I looked at Maeve.
She seemed genuinely uneasy.
Roman placed the folder in front of me but did not open it.
“Nathan Ellis was the financial controller for Gallagher Maritime from 1998 to 2005.”
“My father died in 2011.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because my father attended his funeral.”
I remembered the funeral as disconnected flashes.
Rain on black umbrellas. My mother’s hand gripping mine. Men in dark coats standing near the back of the cemetery.
One of them had left before the service ended.
“I was eighteen,” I whispered. “I would have remembered your father.”
“You never met him.”
“Why not?”
“Your mother asked him to stay away from you.”
The words landed harder than I expected.
“My mother knew the Gallaghers?”
Roman sat across from me.
“She knew my father. She knew me.”
I searched his face.
“Have we met before?”
“Once.”
“When?”
“You were eight.”
A memory surfaced so faintly that I could not tell whether I was finding it or inventing it.
A crowded office. A man giving me a red candy from a glass bowl. My father lifting me onto a swivel chair and warning me not to touch the adding machine.
Another boy stood in the doorway, tall and silent, with a bruise along his jaw.
“You were there,” I said.
Roman nodded.
“My father brought me to the office after school.”
“Why didn’t you say anything last night?”
“I wasn’t certain you were Nathan’s daughter until I checked.”
I looked at the file again.
“What happened between our families?”
Maeve moved closer to the table.
“Our father trusted Nathan more than almost anyone.”
“That does not answer me.”
Roman opened the folder.
The first page was an old photograph.
My father stood beside a much younger version of Roman’s father. Both men were smiling in front of a warehouse, their sleeves rolled up against the summer heat.
My father looked happy.
Not the tired, careful man I remembered from later years.
Beneath the photograph was a partnership agreement.
Nathan Ellis owned eight percent of Gallagher River Holdings, a company that had purchased several warehouses along the Brooklyn waterfront.
I read the number twice.
“This cannot be real.”
“It is,” Julian said from the doorway.
“What happened to his shares?”
“They were placed into a trust after his death,” Roman said.
“For my mother?”
“For you.”
I pushed back from the table.
“My father left me nothing. My mother sold our house to pay his medical debt.”
“The trust was not part of his estate.”
“Then where is it?”
Roman’s expression hardened.
“That is what I have been trying to determine.”
He slid another document toward me.
The trust had been created in 2004.
My full name appeared on the beneficiary line.
Mara Rose Ellis.
The original value had been modest.
The current estimated value was printed on the final page.
$3,860,000.
I stared at the figure until it became meaningless.
“There has to be a mistake.”
“There isn’t,” Julian said.
“I would know if I had almost four million dollars.”
“You should have known,” Roman replied. “The trustee was required to contact you when you turned twenty-five.”
“I’m twenty-six.”
“I know.”
The room became very quiet.
“Who is the trustee?”
Roman turned the page.
The listed firm had closed eight years earlier. Its remaining accounts had been transferred to another financial management company.
I recognized the name.
Shaw Fiduciary Services.
David’s surname.
My skin turned cold.
“No.”
Roman opened a second folder.
“We requested the access history this morning.”
Inside were copies of identification forms, beneficiary questionnaires, and requests for withdrawal.
Most had been rejected because the signatures did not match the original trust documents.
One request had been submitted only three weeks earlier.
Attached to it was a copy of my driver’s license.
I remembered David borrowing my wallet to pick up a prescription.
Beneath the license was a contact authorization form.
The telephone number belonged to David.
The email address did too.
But the signature at the bottom was supposed to be mine.
Roman watched me read it.
“This is why your surname caught my attention last night,” he said. “Someone has been trying to reach your father’s trust for nearly a year.”
I could barely hear him over the pounding of my heart.
“David said he once delivered documents to your office.”
“He did.”
“When?”
“Eleven months ago.”
“Why?”
Roman placed the final page in front of me.
It was a visitor log from Gallagher River Holdings.
David’s signature appeared beneath the date.
On the line labeled PURPOSE OF VISIT, he had written four words.
ELLIS BENEFICIARY LOCATION CONFIRMED.
I looked up at Roman.
He was no longer smirking.
“Mara,” he said quietly, “David did not discover your trust after he started dating you.”
Roman turned over the visitor log, revealing a second date from more than two years earlier.
“He started dating you because he already knew it existed.”
END OF PART 2 – LIKE, SHARE AND COMMENT “THE ENTIRE STORY” IF YOU WANT TO READ THE FULL STORY
