late?’ he asked.

‘Late enough,’ Chloe said.

‘I work here six nights a week and still can’t catch it.’

Sofia set the stack on the desk and turned to Dominic.

Their eye contact lasted barely a second, but it was full of decisions.

‘If Romano wants leverage, he’ll use paper,’ she said.

‘Payroll, lease records, collections, phone data.

If she goes back to her apartment, she’s dead by morning.’

Chloe looked up sharply.

‘Excuse me?’

Sofia crouched so they were eye level.

‘The card was not random,’ she said.

‘Your name may not be on it, but your section is.

Whoever planned tonight expected a server to notice something.

They preselected the witness and the cleanup.

That means someone looked at staff schedules, knew your station, and planned for your body before the first shot was fired.’

Chloe felt every drop of blood drain from her face.

‘So what,’ she whispered.

‘What happens now?’

Dominic answered.

‘For the next few days, every road to you runs through me.’

She laughed once, a thin broken sound.

‘I didn’t save you so I could become your property.’

That was the first time anything almost human moved across his face.

Almost.

‘Property is owned,’ he said.

‘Protected is different.

Learn the difference tonight and you survive it.’

He turned to Sofia.

‘Pay the balances.

All of them.

Kill the collections.

New phone.

New apartment, furnished, not in her name.

Put her on payroll through Ferris Imports for thirty days so her income doesn’t disappear and her trail stays buried.

Leo handles transport.’

Chloe stood up so fast the chair legs scraped.

‘No.

Absolutely not.

You don’t get to just buy my life because I wrote four words on a check.’

Dominic faced her fully then, and for the first time since the shooting, she saw something under the control.

Not softness.

Not exactly.

Recognition, maybe.

‘They already bought a version of your life,’ he said.

‘Your schedule.

Your section.

Your death.

I’m undoing the paperwork.’

She had no answer for that.

Outside the office window, Callahan was being walked through the dining room in handcuffs.

Guests who hadn’t fled stared openly now.

The respectable owner in his spotless white shirt looked smaller than she had ever seen him.

Sarah, the hostess, sat on a milk crate by the service station crying into a linen napkin.

One of the detectives was bagging the reservation book.

Dominic followed Chloe’s gaze.

‘He wrote you into the margin because he thought no one would ask about a waitress,’ he said.

‘Men like him survive by betting on who the room thinks is disposable.’

Something hot and furious uncurled inside her chest.

Not fear this time.

Fury.

Sofia’s phone rang.

She listened for ten seconds, then looked up.

‘The shooter talked in the ambulance,’ she said.

‘Enough.

Vincent Romano’s lieutenant, Nico Ventresca, paid through Callahan’s gambling debt.

Major Crimes is sending units to a warehouse in Chelsea now.’

Leo appeared at the doorway, rain on his shoulders from the alley.

‘Car’s ready,’ he said.

‘Building in Back Bay is secure.

Two entrances.

Concierge doesn’t ask questions.’

Chloe turned from one face to the other.

Less than an hour earlier she’d been worried about tips and whether table seven wanted coffee.

Now men with guns and lawyers and detectives