were deciding where she would sleep before dawn.

It should have felt unreal.

It felt brutally real.

She looked at Dominic.

‘What happens if I say no?’

He didn’t lie to her.

‘Then Leo still takes you somewhere safe tonight,’ he said.

‘And by morning Romano’s people start pulling your life apart through every cheap piece of paper they can find.

After that, I don’t know if I get to you first.’

Honesty had never sounded so dangerous.

Chloe exhaled and nodded once.

‘Thirty days,’ she said.

‘Thirty days,’ Dominic agreed.

The ride across the city was silent except for police radio chatter murmuring from Leo’s earpiece.

Beacon Hill’s wet streets flashed gold under the lamps.

At a red light on Charles, Chloe looked back and saw the Brass Lantern swallowed in blue strobes.

Callahan was being loaded into a cruiser.

For years he’d smiled at regulars, adjusted ties, kissed cheeks, comped desserts, and called his servers family.

Tonight the cuffs on his wrists looked like the first honest thing he’d ever worn.

Leo drove them into Back Bay and under a private awning where a night porter opened the car door without surprise.

The apartment on the twelfth floor smelled like new paint and expensive soap.

There were clean towels folded on the bed, a stocked refrigerator, and a window that looked over the Charles like a postcard version of somebody else’s life.

Chloe stood in the middle of the living room still wearing her stained apron.

‘People just live like this?’ she murmured.

Leo glanced around once.

‘Not usually on waitress money.’

It should have been insulting.

Somehow it wasn’t.

It was just true.

Sofia arrived twenty minutes later with a garment bag, toiletries, a prepaid phone, and a folder thick enough to break a wrist.

Dominic came behind her, no bodyguard now, suit jacket changed, every trace of the dining room cleaned off except the tiredness around his eyes.

Sofia laid the folder on the counter and opened it.

Inside were pages, each clipped and tabbed with frightening neatness.

One sheet showed Chloe’s hospital balance marked settled in full.

Another confirmed her lease termination by mutual release, effective immediately, with penalties waived.

Another transferred her employee record from The Brass Lantern to Ferris Imports, a legitimate Moretti-held logistics company that owned three warehouses, a wine importer, and two restaurants no one in Boston whispered about because they didn’t need to.

There was even a new bank card with her name on it.

Chloe stared at the papers until the words blurred.

‘You did all this tonight?’ she asked.

Sofia closed the folder.

‘I did what money and fear make very fast when applied correctly.’

‘Do I owe him for this?’

Sofia’s gaze flicked to Dominic.

He answered himself.

‘No.’

Chloe looked at him, uncertain she’d heard right.

‘The debt is paid,’ he said.

‘Not purchased.

I don’t collect from graves or daughters.’ He paused.

‘And I don’t keep score on lives saved.’

Something inside her cracked then, not from fear but relief so sudden it hurt.

She sat down on the edge of the sofa and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.

For months she had measured every grocery item, every subway fare, every shift, every hour of sleep, every call from collections.

She