Chapter 2 - The Arrival of the Old Guard
The restaurant was completely booked. The kitchen was dangerously in the weeds, the expediter was screaming until his voice went hoarse, and the air was thick with the suffocating smell of seared meat, roasting garlic, and sheer panic.
The phone at the hostess stand rang.
Tessa was carrying a heavy tray of dirty glassware past the front when she saw the young hostess, Chloe, turn deathly pale.
Chloe hung up the receiver slowly, her hand shaking violently, and looked straight at Richard.
“That was Gabriel Rossi’s driver,” she whispered, though in the tense, fragile quiet of the foyer it sounded like a shout. “He needs a table for four right now. He said his father is with him.”
Richard literally stopped breathing.
The ruddy color drained rapidly from his face, leaving him a sickly, pasty gray.
“Don Salvatore?”
“He just said his father.”
“Clear the center booth immediately!” Richard barked, suddenly moving with frantic, terrified energy. “Move the senator! I don’t care if he’s mid-bite. Comp his entire meal and move him to a dark table in the back. Get the sommelier! Tell him to pull the eighty-two Barolo right now! Move, move, move!”
The panic was infectious.
The waitstaff scrambled like ants under a kicked anthill. Tessa watched as the senator and his escort were hurriedly relocated, clutching their napkins while the center booth was wiped down with frantic, obsessive precision.
Don Salvatore Rossi was a living ghost story.
He was the old guard, the kind of terrifying patriarch who did not give a damn about public relations, media optics, or legitimate corporate fronts. He had built the family empire with lead, wire, and unyielding fear. He had not been seen publicly in more than a year.
Rumors on the street said he was dying of aggressive cancer. Others whispered he had gone completely senile.
Ten minutes later, the heavy oak doors of Ilvento swung open.
The silence that followed was entirely unnatural.
It rippled through the expansive dining room like a physical shock wave. Forks stopped halfway to mouths. Conversations died mid-sentence. Even the clatter of pots and pans from the kitchen seemed to muffle itself.
Gabriel walked in first.
He looked profoundly tense. His jaw was clenched so tightly that the muscle ticked rhythmically, and his dark eyes swept the room with an almost paranoid intensity. He was not wearing his usual tailored business suit; instead, he wore a dark turtleneck beneath a heavy wool overcoat, making him look less like a restaurateur and more like a tactical soldier.
Behind him, flanked by two massive men whose custom suits bulged awkwardly at the armpits, came Don Salvatore.
He was a remarkably small man now, shrunken and almost frail, leaning heavily on a polished wooden cane with a silver handle. His face was a roadmap of deep, craggy lines, his skin the color of old parchment left in the sun.
But his eyes were entirely black, razor-sharp, and terrifyingly alive.
They did not hold his son’s quiet calculation. They held pure, unadulterated malice.
He walked slowly. The rhythmic tap of his cane against the Italian marble floor echoed through the dead silence of the restaurant.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It sounded like a slow countdown to an execution.
Richard practically bowed at a ninety-degree angle as he led them toward the center booth. “Don Rossi, it is an immense, unspeakable honor. Welcome to Ilvento. We are completely at your disposal.”
Salvatore did not even look at him. He waved one liver-spotted hand dismissively, as though swatting away an annoying housefly.
Gabriel helped his father gingerly into the booth. The two bodyguards took positions at adjacent tables, glaring with open hostility at any patron foolish enough to make eye contact.
The atmosphere in the room became suffocating. The wealthy patrons, normally entitled and loud, shrank back into their seats, suddenly hyperaware of their own mortality.
Tessa stood beside the POS station, gripping a clean linen towel tightly in her sweating hand.
She watched the toxic dynamic between father and son. Gabriel sat stiffly across from the old man. There was no warmth between them—only cold obligation and thick, simmering tension.
“Who is taking this table?” Richard hissed, appearing suddenly behind the group of waitstaff clustered near the kitchen doors.
The senior waiters suddenly found the floor tiles intensely fascinating. Nobody moved an inch.
“I’m not doing it,” whispered Paul, a veteran waiter who usually fought for high-rolling tables. “I served the Lupatti crew last year and messed up a wine order by five minutes. I thought they were going to follow me home and skin me. I’m not going anywhere near the Don.”
“Someone has to take the table, you idiots!” Richard’s voice cracked with hysteria. His eyes darted wildly through the group.
Then they landed on Tessa.
“No,” she said immediately, reading his cowardly mind. “I take Gabriel’s section on Thursdays. Not this. Absolutely not.”
“Tessa, please.” Richard nearly grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her sleeve. “You’re good with him. You don’t get rattled. Just pour the water, drop the menus, and let him order. The old man probably won’t even speak to you.”
“Richard, I’m working a double shift. I’m exhausted. Send one of the floor managers.”
“If you do this, I’ll give you the weekend off. Fully paid.”
Tessa froze.
Two days of uninterrupted sleep. Two days without the sharp aching in her joints.
May you like
She looked toward the center booth. Gabriel was studying the menu with a weary, defeated expression. Salvatore was scowling darkly at the table setting.
“Fine,” Tessa muttered, grabbing a heavy silver water pitcher. “Gabriel better leave a damn good tip for hazard pay.”
