The man in the olive jacket started to rise at the exact moment Dominic Moretti’s hand disappeared beneath the white tablecloth.

‘Stay down,’ Dominic said.

He didn’t say it loudly.

He didn’t have to.

Chloe dropped before she even understood she’d obeyed him.

A heartbeat later Dominic drove his knee into the underside of the table.

Crystal, plates, and a bottle of Cabernet jumped into the air in a red-white burst.

The gunman’s first suppressed shot went wide, punching through a brass lamp instead of Dominic’s spine.

Then Leo moved.

The giant bodyguard came off the bar stool like a thrown refrigerator.

He hit the shooter from the side just as the man fired again.

The second round chewed into the brick wall behind the booth.

Guests screamed.

Someone crawled under a table.

A woman near the window knocked over two candles and began sobbing into both hands.

Chloe stayed on her knees, palms flat against the hardwood, the smell of wine and burned metal filling her nose.

Something hard slid under her shoe.

She looked down and saw a laminated card no bigger than an index card.

One side was a floor map of The Brass Lantern.

Dominic’s booth was circled in red.

Under it, in block letters, were five colder words.

SERVER MUST DIE AFTER HIT.

For one stunned second, Chloe forgot the gun, forgot the screaming, forgot everything except the fact that whoever planned this had planned for her to die too.

‘Gun!’ Leo barked.

Chloe flinched up just in time to see Dominic catch the shooter’s wrist with both hands and slam it against the edge of the overturned table.

The suppressor clattered loose.

Leo wrenched the man’s arm behind his back, drove a knee between his shoulders, and stripped the pistol away with one brutal twist.

The shooter bit back a cry, then tried to reach into his jacket with his free hand.

Dominic was faster.

He ripped the man’s coat open, found a second magazine and a burner phone, and slid both across the floor to Leo without taking his eyes off the shooter’s face.

‘Doors,’ Dominic said.

No panic.

No shouting.

Just command.

Leo tossed the gun to the bartender, who caught it with both shaking hands, and pointed at the service entrance.

‘Lock the front.

Lock the alley.

Nobody in, nobody out.’

That was when Mr.

Callahan found his voice.

‘Dominic, Jesus Christ, somebody call the police—’

Dominic turned his head at last.

It was the first full movement he’d made since reading Chloe’s note, and somehow it was colder than the gunfire.

‘Interesting,’ he said softly.

‘You look more frightened than surprised.’

Callahan’s mouth opened, then closed.

Chloe realized she was still clutching the receipt pad.

Her fingers hurt from how hard she was holding it.

Dominic looked down, saw the laminated card near her shoe, and crouched in front of her.

‘Give me that,’ he said.

His tone wasn’t cruel.

It was worse than cruel.

It was precise.

Chloe handed him the card.

He read it once, and something in his expression shut like a steel door.

When he looked back at her, the room’s chaos seemed to blur around the edges.

‘Come with me,’ he said.

‘I—’

‘Now, Chloe.’

He knew her name.

In that moment, that felt more