Chapter 2 - Gregory’s Reckoning
The bone broth burned my tongue, but the heat spread through my chest like a revival wire. For the first time in two days, my hands stopped trembling completely. Ethan didn't rush me. He sat back, watching me drink with the detached curiosity of an art collector examining a damaged canvas.
When the cup was dry, he stood up. He was tall—over six-foot-two—with broad shoulders that moved with predatory grace.
""Walk with me,"" he said.
""Where?""
""To settle your invoice.""
He opened the heavy oak door leading to the back corridors of the restaurant. Out here, far away from the velvet banquettes and soft jazz of the dining room, the restaurant showed its real bones: bare concrete, fluorescent strips humming on their last legs, and the sour stench of bleach and wet cardboard.
Two guards stood outside the walk-in dry storage room. When Ethan approached, one turned the brass padlock and yanked the heavy metal latch open.
Inside, sitting on an overturned plastic bucket among twenty-pound sacks of Arborio rice and canned San Marzano tomatoes, was Gregory Davis.
His tie was undone. His face was soaked in cold sweat, his thinning hair plastered against his forehead. The moment he saw Ethan, he scrambled up, nearly tripping over a crate of virgin olive oil.
""Mr. Hayes! Sir! I swear to God, this is a misunderstanding,"" Gregory stammered, wiping his palms on his slacks. Then his eyes darted to me, turning instantly venomous. ""You brought this lying bitch in here? Mr. Hayes, she's an illegal sub-contractor! She showed up uninvited, broke two bottles of vintage Barolo when she faked that faint, and cost us nearly four grand in dining room repairs! I was going to call the cops to protect your investment!""
Ethan walked slowly past the sacks of flour, stopping two feet from Gregory. He reached out and adjusted the lapel of Gregory’s jacket with terrifying tenderness.
""You charge forty-eight dollars for an appetizer of octopus carpaccio, Gregory.""
""Yes, sir, the margins are excellent—""
""And you bring in roughly ninety thousand dollars a week through that front register,"" Ethan continued smoothly. ""Yet you withheld three hundred dollars from a nursing mother who spent four weeks cleaning grease that was rotting beneath your kitchen floorboards.""
Gregory swallowed audibly. ""She didn't finish the final shift! The contract explicitly stated—""
Crack.
The sound was sharp and sickening. Ethan hadn't balled his fist; he had simply driven the heel of his palm directly into the bridge of Gregory’s nose. The manager hit the concrete hard, clutching his face as blood welled between his fingers, staining his pristine white dress shirt.
I stepped back involuntarily, my back hitting the doorframe. My pulse hammered in my ears. I had lived with a violent father and an abusive ex-husband; I knew the terrifying finality of violence. But Ethan Hayes didn't strike out of rage. His pulse hadn't even elevated. He looked down at Gregory the way an exterminator looks at a waterbug.
""Contracts are sacred in my line of work, Gregory,"" Ethan whispered, crouching over the groaning man. ""When a man works, he gets paid. When a woman breaks her back in the dirt so her baby doesn't starve, you do not short her twenty dollars, let alone three hundred. Because when you do that under my roof, you make me look like a cheap hustler who preys on the weak.""
Ethan reached into Gregory’s breast pocket, removed a thick alligator-skin wallet, and flipped it open. He extracted a crisp stack of hundreds.
""What was the sum, Norah?"" Ethan asked without looking back at me.
""Three... three hundred,"" I stammered, my voice barely audible over Gregory's choked sobs.
Ethan peeled off three hundred-dollar bills. Then he peeled off seven more. He dropped the wallet onto Gregory's chest and stood up, walking toward me.
He held the money out. A thousand dollars. More cash than I had seen in one place since before Sam's father drained our joint account and vanished into the wind.
""Take it,"" Ethan commanded.
""He only owed me three,"" I whispered, keeping my hands tucked tightly against my ribs. ""I don't take charity. And I don't take blood money.""
A flicker of genuine amusement—the first crack in his stone facade—danced across Ethan’s eyes.
""This isn't charity, Norah. The three hundred is your principal. The seven hundred is interest for your bruised elbows and the terror you felt while your child was waiting."" He grabbed my right wrist, turned my palm up, and slapped the bills into my skin, closing my fingers over them. ""Never apologize for taking what is owed to you by right of suffering.""
May you like
Before I could answer, Dante reappeared at the end of the hallway, holding a dripping black umbrella.
""Boss,"" Dante said quietly, his eyes darting to Gregory on the floor with total indifference. ""The kid is secured. Mrs. Higgins took the money and went home happy. But we have a situation at the girl's apartment building.""
