Chapter 1 - THE X BESIDE HIS GLASS
Dominic Russo’s eyes moved from the black napkin to Lydia’s face.
She held his stare for one dangerous second.
Don’t drink it.
That was all she could tell him without getting them both killed.
Dominic’s expression did not change. He lifted the crystal glass, brought it toward his mouth, then paused as Leo Moretti leaned forward to light his cigarette.
“You’re blocking my view,” Dominic said.
Leo shifted slightly.
Dominic’s fingers loosened.
The glass slipped from his hand and shattered across the marble floor.
Every conversation in the Onyx Room stopped.
“My apologies,” Lydia said quickly, reaching for a towel.
Dominic caught her wrist before she could touch the spilled scotch.
His grip was controlled, not cruel, but it made her heart slam against her ribs.
“Leave it,” he said.
Paul, the floor manager, rushed toward the booth. “Mr. Russo, I’m so sorry. Lydia is new. She’s clumsy.”
“She didn’t drop it.”
Paul froze.
Dominic turned his icy gaze toward him. “I did.”
Leo understood immediately. He stood and looked toward the staff exit, where Thomas had been seconds earlier.
The senior waiter was gone.
“Find him,” Leo ordered.
Two Russo guards moved through the crowd.
Paul’s face turned gray. “Is there a problem?”
Dominic released Lydia’s wrist and reached for the decanter.
Lydia’s breath caught.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
It was the first honest word she had spoken since approaching the table.
Paul heard it.
His fear vanished beneath sudden rage.
“You stupid girl.”
He lunged for Lydia, but Leo stepped between them and drove him against the edge of the booth.
Chairs scraped across the floor. Men in expensive suits reached beneath their jackets. The pianist stopped playing, leaving only rain rattling against the frosted windows.
Paul shouted toward the bar. “Now!”
The bartender ducked.
Three men rose from separate tables.
Dominic seized Lydia by the waist and pulled her behind the leather booth as the first shot cracked into the ceiling. Guests screamed and dropped beneath tables. Champagne bottles exploded behind the bar.
“Stay down,” Dominic ordered.
“There’s a service corridor behind the kitchen,” Lydia said. “It leads to the loading dock.”
Leo returned fire toward a marble column, forcing the gunmen to retreat. “That corridor will be covered.”
“Not the laundry passage,” Lydia said. “The club keeps it locked because the fire marshal doesn’t know it exists.”
Dominic looked at her sharply. “Can you open it?”
“I clean the VIP rooms after my shifts. I know where Paul keeps the key.”
Another shot struck the booth.
Dominic grabbed her hand. “Then move.”
They crossed the lounge while Russo’s guards shielded them. Lydia kicked off her heels and ran through the kitchen, past terrified cooks crouched behind stainless-steel counters.
She reached beneath Paul’s desk near the liquor cage and tore loose a magnetic key taped underneath.
Leo stared at her. “You notice everything, don’t you?”
“People say a lot when they think the waitress is invisible.”
She opened the narrow steel door.
The passage smelled of detergent and damp concrete. Dominic went first, Lydia behind him, while Leo and two guards covered the rear.
Halfway down the corridor, Lydia heard footsteps approaching from the loading dock.
“Someone’s coming.”
Dominic killed the overhead light.
Darkness swallowed them.
A man entered from the opposite end, speaking urgently into a phone.
“Russo’s still inside. The Bennett girl warned him.”
Lydia stopped breathing.
The Bennett girl.
They had known exactly who she was.
Dominic stepped from the darkness, knocked the phone from the man’s hand, and forced him against the wall before he could reach for his weapon.
Leo took the man’s gun.
“Who told you her name?” Dominic asked.
The man spit blood from a split lip and smiled. “Ask her brother.”
Lydia’s knees nearly gave out.
“I don’t have a brother.”
The man laughed.
“Nathan Bennett says otherwise.”
Lydia stared at him.
Nathan was her older half brother. He had left home three years earlier after a bitter fight with their father. Lydia had not spoken to him since.
She had believed he was living in Florida.
Dominic’s men dragged the gunman back toward the club while Dominic led Lydia to a black SUV waiting in the rain.
She stopped at the open door.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Dominic glanced toward the alley entrance. Sirens echoed several blocks away, but no one knew whether they belonged to honest police officers or men purchased by the Castellanos.
“The people inside know your name,” he said. “They know where you work, and they know you warned me.”
“That doesn’t make you safe.”
“No.”
His answer came without hesitation.
“It makes me the person they failed to kill.”
Lydia looked back at the club. Paul had assigned her to Dominic’s table. Thomas had prepared the poisoned bottle. Someone connected to her own family had told them she would be there.
She climbed into the SUV.
Dominic sat across from her as the vehicle pulled away from the curb.
“Why did you help me?” he asked.
Lydia wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in her wet silk dress.
“Because I didn’t want to watch someone die.”
“Even someone like me?”
“I didn’t know what kind of man you were.”
Dominic’s gaze settled on the X she had scratched into the napkin, which he still held between two fingers.
“You knew enough to be afraid.”
“I was terrified.”
“You didn’t look terrified.”
May you like
Lydia met his eyes.
“That’s because terrified women don’t survive long in places like the Onyx Room.”
