Chapter 3 - The Price of a Seat
The diner grew deathly quiet, save for the hum of the refrigerator coils in the back kitchen.
Jimmy took three slow steps into the room, his heavy boots leaving dark, wet prints on Rosa’s freshly mopped floor. Behind him, parked at the curb with its high beams burning through the fogged glass, sat a black Lincoln Continental with two more men sitting in the front seats.
"Get behind the counter, Rosa," I said, my voice dropping an octave into the flat, dangerous register I hadn't used in half a decade.
Rosa didn't argue. She stepped back slowly, her hand sliding down to grip the wooden edge of the counter, her eyes fixed on Jimmy's leather jacket.
"You're out of your territory, Jimmy," I said, keeping my body between him and the back kitchen door where four sleeping girls were currently tucked under thin blankets. "5th Street belongs to the independents."
"It used to," Jimmy sneered, taking another step forward. "Until Falcone decided he wanted the whole avenue cleaned up. We’ve been watching you, Leo. Every Tuesday. Every Thursday. Sitting in the corner booth like a good little altar boy. We thought you were broken. We thought you were done."
He looked past me, his eyes landing on the envelope of cash sitting on the table.
"Then we see you at the public school yesterday," Jimmy chuckled, shaking his head. "Sitting at a little plastic table eating apple slices with four brats. Falcone got a real kick out of that. He said, 'Jimmy, a man who doesn't care about anything is hard to hit. But a man who starts playing daddy to a waitress's kids? That's a man who just handed us his leash.'"
My pulse didn't spike. My hands didn't shake. When you've spent twenty years living in the dark, threat assessment becomes as natural as breathing. Jimmy was armed, but he was arrogant. He thought my five years of silence had turned me soft.
"Jimmy," I said softly, stepping away from the booth to draw his focus further from the kitchen. "I’m going to tell you something once. If you mention those girls again, you won't walk out of this diner."
Jimmy’s smile flickered, a momentary shadow of doubt crossing his eyes before his ego took over again. He pulled his right hand out of his jacket pocket, revealing a heavy, dull-grey 9mm pistol.
"You're in no position to make threats, Leo," Jimmy said, raising the barrel toward my chest. "Falcone wants you at the warehouse on Pier 4 in twenty minutes. You come quietly, and we leave the waitress and her bastards alone. You say no... well, Jimmy and the boys take a walk into the back room."
"Leo!" Rosa cried out from behind the counter, her voice sharp with sudden panic.
I didn't answer her. I didn't look at her.
Instead, I took one fast, explosive step forward!
Before Jimmy could pull the trigger, my left hand shot out like an iron clamp, grabbing the cylinder of his gun and forcing the weapon upward toward the ceiling!
BANG!
The shot deafened the room, shattering the decorative hanging glass lamp above the counter in a shower of sharp crystals!
Without losing momentum, I drove my right elbow directly into Jimmy’s jaw with the force of a battering ram. Blood and teeth sprayed across the laminate floor as his head snapped back. He stumbled backward, his hands flailing, but I grabbed his leather collar, twisted his body around, and drove his face directly into the heavy oak corner of my usual booth!
He went down hard, his weapon clattering across the wet floorboards.
Outside, the high beams of the LincolnContinental flashed twice. The doors flew open, and two heavily built men in coats began sprinting toward the diner entrance.
I snatched Jimmy’s fallen pistol from the floor, pointed it through the glass door, and fired three rapid shots into the radiator of the approaching Lincoln!
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Steam exploded from beneath the car's hood in a roaring white plume! The two enforcers skidded to a halt on the wet pavement, scrambling behind their smoking vehicle as metal shards and hot coolant rained down on the sidewalk.
I turned back to Rosa. She was pressed against the back wall, her eyes wide, her chest heaving, but she wasn't screaming.
"Get the girls," I ordered, my voice cutting through the ringing in her ears like a blade. "Now, Rosa! We have ninety seconds before Falcone’s secondary team gets here!"
She didn't waste time asking questions. She turned and ran into the kitchen.
Thirty seconds later, four young girls emerged from the back door. Nine-year-old Chloe was holding her youngest sister, four-year-old Mia, in her arms. Seven-year-old Lily and eight-year-old Maya were clutching their mother’s apron, their eyes big with terror as they looked at the blood on the floor and the shattered glass hanging from the ceiling.
Little Lily looked at me—at the gun in my hand, at the man unconscious on the floor—and her small voice trembled through the steam.
"Are you... are you still our fake dad?" she asked softly.
May you like
I looked at her, then at Rosa, and shoved the pistol into my belt.
"No, Lily," I said, picking up Mia and holding her tight against my chest. "Tonight, I'm real. Move!"
