Chapter 1 - The Woman Who Flew
Leo said it as if flying were something ordinary people could do when they were scared enough.
"But she flew."
The man beside me went completely still.
For one strange second, the chaos of Lumina seemed to bend around him without touching him.
Servers were crying, customers were shouting, and somebody near the bar kept asking whether the police had been called, but the man kneeling beside me heard only his son.
His eyes dropped to Leo's face.
"Show me your hands."
Leo obediently held them up.
There were red streaks of wine across his sleeves, but no blood.
The man's jaw tightened so hard I saw the muscle jump.
Then he looked at me again.
"What is your name?"
I swallowed against the metallic taste in my mouth.
"Emma."
"Emma what?"
The room tilted under me.
"Hayes."
He repeated it quietly.
"Emma Hayes."
The way he said my name made it sound less like a question and more like a fact he intended to remember forever.
A man in a black suit appeared at his shoulder.
He was broad, gray at the temples, and carrying himself with the rigid alertness of someone who had spent his life expecting bullets instead of bad news.
"Nico, the doctor is three minutes out."
Nico.
I knew that name.
Everybody in Chicago knew that name, even if they pretended they did not.
Nico Valenti.
Owner of shipping companies, private clubs, construction firms, and at least three legitimate charities whose photographs appeared in newspapers every Christmas.
Also, according to every rumor whispered in kitchens after midnight, the man who controlled half the city's organized crime without ever being convicted of so much as jaywalking.
I had thrown myself over Nico Valenti's son.
My vision blurred.
"Stay with me," Nico ordered.
"I'm trying."
His expression changed by less than an inch, but somehow I knew he almost smiled.
Then Julian pushed through the crowd.
Our floor manager looked horrified, but not at my injuries.
He looked horrified at the broken crystal, the overturned VIP table, and the wealthy customers filming everything on their phones.
"Mr. Valenti, I cannot apologize enough."
Nico did not even look at him.
"Where is the woman who dropped the tray?"
Julian blinked.
"Chloe?"
"Is that her name?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where is she?"
Julian turned toward the aisle.
I turned too, although the movement sent knives of pain through my back.
Chloe had been there less than a minute earlier.
Now she was gone.
The fallen tray remained beside the booth.
A single shoe lay near the brass strip where she had tripped.
But Chloe herself had vanished.
"She was right there," Julian said.
Nico finally looked at him.
I had never seen a grown man lose color so quickly.
"Then find her."
"Of course."
Julian spun around and started shouting at the staff.
The older man beside Nico crouched near the brass floor strip.
He touched something with two fingers, studied it, and looked up.
"Boss."
Nico's gaze shifted.
The man held up a thin smear of clear gel from the polished brass.
It caught the chandelier light like oil.
My stomach tightened.
That strip had been dry ten minutes earlier.
I knew because I had walked over it twice.
Nico saw the recognition on my face.
"You noticed something."
I should have lied.
Every rule I had lived by told me to lie.
Instead I heard myself say, "That wasn't there before."
"You're sure?"
"I crossed that strip carrying water."
I winced as another pulse of pain traveled under my shoulder.
"If it had been slippery, I would've felt it."
The older man looked at Nico.
Nico did not answer him.
He only said, "Seal the exits."
The words were quiet.
The reaction was immediate.
Men I had assumed were ordinary customers stood from tables around the room.
Two moved toward the front doors.
Another headed for the kitchen.
A fourth positioned himself near the service elevator.
Julian stared.
"Mr. Valenti, you cannot lock down the restaurant."
Nico looked at him at last.
"Watch me."
Julian's mouth closed.
Leo was still touching my cheek.
His little fingers trembled.
"Are you going to die?"
The question hit me harder than the crystal had.
"No."
I forced a smile.
"I'm much too stubborn."
He considered that seriously.
"Papa says stubborn people cause headaches."
"Your papa sounds experienced."
The older man beside us made a sound that might have been a cough hiding a laugh.
Nico's eyes narrowed at him.
"Mateo."
"I said nothing."
A doctor arrived carrying a black case.
Not an ambulance crew.
Not paramedics.
A private doctor wearing a suit under his raincoat and looking as if he had been summoned from a board meeting.
He examined my back without moving the glass.
"She needs imaging before I remove the large pieces."
"Do it here," Nico said.
The doctor shook his head.
"Not safely."
"Then we go."
I found enough strength to object.
"I don't have insurance for some private hospital."
Nico stared at me as though I had spoken another language.
"You just used your body to protect my son."
"That doesn't magically give me insurance."
"It gives you mine."
"That's not how insurance works."
Mateo looked away again, and this time I was certain he was smiling.
Nico leaned closer.
"Emma, if you argue with me while there is glass in your back, I am going to become extremely unpleasant."
"You don't seem especially pleasant now."
His eyes held mine.
Then, unbelievably, one corner of his mouth moved.
"Good."
The doctor and Mateo helped me onto a stretcher.
Pain exploded so violently that blackness rushed across my vision.
The last thing I saw inside Lumina was Leo clutching his dinosaur to his chest with one hand while reaching toward me with the other.
"Papa, I'm coming too."
"Yes."
Nico did not hesitate.
"You are."
I woke beneath white lights with my face turned sideways against a hospital pillow.
For several seconds I could not remember where I was.
Then my back reminded me.
Every breath pulled at stitches beneath heavy bandages.
A machine clicked quietly beside the bed.
Rain streaked a dark window across the room.
I tried to move.
"Don't."
I froze.
Nico Valenti sat in the chair beside my bed.
His jacket was gone.
His tie had been loosened.
The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled to his elbows.
For the first time he looked less like a legend people feared and more like a man who had not allowed himself to breathe for several hours.
Leo was asleep across two chairs near the window with a blanket around him.
His dinosaur rested under his chin.
"How long?" I whispered.
"Four hours."
"Why are you still here?"
He looked at me as though the answer were obvious.
"My son refused to leave."
"So you stayed because he ordered you to?"
"Apparently I am weak against dictators under four feet tall."
The drugs made me laugh before I could stop myself.
That was a mistake.
I hissed.
Nico stood immediately.
"Pain?"
"No, I always make that sound when I'm comfortable."
His gaze sharpened.
"You joke when you're frightened."
"You threaten people when you're frightened."
Silence settled between us.
I realized too late what I had said.
Most people probably did not tell Nico Valenti he was frightened.
He looked toward Leo.
"Only when it concerns him."
There was no performance in the answer.
That honesty unsettled me more than anger would have.
"The doctor removed eleven pieces of crystal."
I closed my eyes.
"Eleven?"
"Two required stitches deep enough that you will need follow-up care."
"Great."
I stared at the ceiling.
"My manager is going to love that."
Nico's face hardened.
"Your manager will not be speaking to you tonight."
"He'll fire me tomorrow instead."
"No."
"You don't know Julian."
"I know his employer."
That made me turn my head.
"Please don't destroy someone's restaurant because I got hurt."
"I am not interested in the restaurant."
He leaned one hand on the rail of my bed.
"I am interested in why someone coated that floor strip with silicone less than twenty minutes before a tray of crystal was carried past my son."
The drugs suddenly felt less powerful.
"You think Chloe did it?"
"I think Chloe is missing."
"She wouldn't hurt a child."
"How long have you known her?"
"Eight months."
"Do you know where she lives?"
I opened my mouth.
Then closed it.
I knew what bus she took.
I knew she hated pickles.
I knew she sent half her paycheck to a mother somewhere in Indiana.
At least, that was what she had told me.
I did not know her address.
I did not know her mother's name.
I did not even know whether Chloe was her legal name.
Nico saw every realization cross my face.
"My people checked the employee file."
He slid a thin folder onto the blanket near my hand.
"The Social Security number belongs to a woman who died in Arizona nine years ago."
I stared at him.
"That's impossible."
"It is inconvenient."
"She worked beside me every week."
"That does not make her identity real."
A cold sensation spread through my chest.
"Why would someone use a dead woman's identity to serve wine?"
"That," Nico said, "is one of several questions I intend to answer."
Leo stirred near the window.
Both of us looked over.
He rolled onto his side and went back to sleep.
Nico's face softened for exactly one second.
Then it closed again.
"There is something else."
I did not like his tone.
"What?"
"Your apartment was searched while you were in surgery."
My mouth went dry.
"By who?"
"I don't know yet."
I pushed myself up before pain forced me back down.
"My landlord has cameras."
"The cameras went offline at ten fourteen."
"My laptop?"
"Gone."
"My cash box?"
"Still there."
"Then what did they take?"
Nico reached into his pocket.
He placed a photograph on my blanket.
It showed my tiny studio with drawers pulled open and the mattress flipped sideways.
On my pillow sat a small plastic dinosaur.
Not Leo's green one.
This one was red.
Around its neck was a folded strip of paper.
Nico unfolded another photograph showing the message written on it.
Three words filled the page.
SHE SHOULD HAVE MISSED.
I stopped breathing.
Nico's voice became very quiet.
May you like
"Whoever arranged what happened tonight knows your name."
