Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Palermo
The smell of dish soap, boiling marinara, and industrial degreaser struck Paige the moment she cleared the swinging doors.
“Sarah, what the hell was that?” Rick barked, shoving a tray of bread into her hands. “You don’t approach them! Are you trying to get this place burned down?”
Paige set the tray on the stainless-steel prep counter without answering. Her hands were shaking so violently she had to jam them into her apron pockets to hide it.
*He heard. He knows.*
She didn't need to see Landon Moretti's face to know what that lullaby meant to him. When she was twenty-one, living under her father’s protective shadow in Sicily, Marco Moretti had visited their estate during the fragile peace treaty between the Falcones and the Morettis. She had sat on the stone terrace while Marco had sung that very song to soothe an orphaned puppy. It was a family relic, guarded like holy scripture.
By singing it, she hadn't just comforted a child. She had lit a flare directly over her foxhole.
Paige didn't go to the staff lockers. She didn't collect her jacket or the seventy-two dollars in cash sitting in her tip jar. Survival meant leaving everything behind. If you carried baggage, you carried a trail.
She slipped through the kitchen’s prep corridor, past the screaming line cooks, toward the dry storage room that held the emergency fire exit leading into the narrow alley between The Gilded Spoon and an abandoned dry cleaner.
Behind her, the kitchen doors banged open.
“Nobody leaves!” Dominic’s voice boomed through the clatter of pots and pans. “Hands where we can see them! Where is the girl? The dark-haired waitress with the nametag?”
The cooks froze. Panic ripped through the kitchen.
Paige hit the emergency bar on the metal exit door with her hip. The alarm didn’t sound—she had jammed the sensor with folded cardboard two weeks after starting the job, a habit drilled into her by a father who had known he was going to be murdered long before the hitmen arrived.
The door swung outward. Freezing November rain lashed her face, plastering her dark hair to her temples. Her thin work shoes skidded on the greasy cobblestones of the alley. She turned left, toward 8th Avenue, ducking her head beneath the downpour.
*Run, Paige. Just run.*
She sprinted through the rain, her lungs burning with the icy air. She crossed 48th Street just as the light turned red, a yellow cab blaring its horn as it swerved within inches of her knees. She didn't look back. She plunged down the concrete stairs of the subway station, swiping her transit card with fingers that felt like numb twigs, and slipped onto an uptown train just before the pneumatic doors hissed shut.
She collapsed against the scratched plastic seat, gasping for breath, her wet clothes clinging to her shivering skin.
Across town, back at The Gilded Spoon, Landon Moretti stood in the middle of the kitchen. The manager was kneeling on the greasy floor tiles, sweating through his thin poplin shirt, while Dominic dumped the contents of the employee locker room onto a stainless-steel preparation table.
“Her name is Sarah Miller,” the manager blubbered, wiping his brow with a trembling sleeve. “I swear to God, Mr. Moretti, that’s all I know! She came in off the street six months ago with an Ohio ID and a social security card. Cash pay, mostly. Never caused trouble. Always on time.”
Landon didn't look at the manager. He picked up an abandoned canvas tote bag from the pile on the table. Inside was a worn paperback copy of Dante’s *Inferno*—in the original Italian—a tube of cheap lip balm, and an MTA metro card.
He opened the front cover of the book. On the yellowed flyleaf, written in elegant, disciplined script, was an inscription: *A mia cara Paige. Non dimenticare chi sei.*
*To my dear Paige. Never forget who you are.*
Landon closed the book, his thumb tracing the worn leather spine. The blood pounded behind his temples with deafening clarity.
“Paige,” he said quietly.
Dominic leaned in. “Paige Larkin? Salvatore Falcone’s daughter? Boss, she’s supposed to be dead. The Rossi family claimed they threw her into the bay off Palermo the night her father’s compound was hit.”
“They lied,” Landon said, his voice flat, terrifying in its absolute certainty. “Or she was smarter than the hit squad they sent to kill her.”
He turned to Dominic, his eyes gleaming like polished obsidian.
“Marco told me before he died that Salvatore Falcone had entrusted his daughter with the ledger—the one that lists every dirty judge, every purchased senator, and every traitor in the Commission who took Rossi’s money to execute my family. For three years, Rossi has been looking for that ledger. And now, she is sitting in my city, serving soup to tourists.”
“What do you want us to do, Landon?” Dominic asked, his demeanor shifting from muscle to general.
May you like
“Pull the security feeds from every traffic camera within ten blocks of this restaurant,” Landon ordered, slipping the book into the inner pocket of his charcoal coat. “Check the subway hubs. Alert the ports. She has no money, no coat, and nowhere to run. Bring her to the penthouse. Intact. If anyone harms a single hair on her head, I will butcher them myself.”
***
