Chapter 3 - The Room Above Bellini HouseAmelia woke at 4:13 a.m. convinced someone was breaking down the door.
To Amelia, it felt like six hours.
Paramedics moved around her while the dining room remained frozen in the strange aftermath of violence. Someone had lowered the music. Someone else had covered the blood on the floor with folded linen napkins until an officer told them not to disturb anything.
Lucian remained beside Amelia until the paramedics lifted her onto the stretcher.
Raymond did not move.
He had spent most of those six minutes attempting to recover his confidence.
It wasn’t working.
“So what?” he said finally. “Everybody knows everybody in Brooklyn. I’m supposed to tremble because you own a restaurant?”
Lucian stood.
“No.”
He buttoned the cuff of his white shirt as though nothing unusual had happened.
“You should be concerned because you assaulted a woman in front of ninety-three witnesses and fourteen cameras.”
Raymond’s expression changed.
His eyes darted toward the ceiling.
Tiny black domes stared back at him.
Lucian noticed.
“And because,” he continued, “you apparently followed her here after she spent three years trying to escape you.”
Raymond’s jaw clenched.
“You don’t know anything about us.”
“Enough.”
“She’s my girlfriend.”
From the stretcher, Amelia whispered, “Ex.”
It was a tiny word.
But it silenced the room.
Raymond snapped his head toward her.
Lucian stepped between them.
“No more.”
Something in his voice ended the argument.
Two NYPD officers entered through the front doors.
Raymond immediately spread his hands.
“Great. Finally. She attacked me first.”
Amelia closed her eyes.
Of course.
That was Raymond’s favorite trick.
Change the story before anyone else could speak.
“She threw a glass,” Raymond said.
Kevin Doyle made a choking sound.
“You punched her because she wouldn’t leave with you.”
Raymond turned.
“You want to keep your job?”
Kevin blinked.
Then slowly looked toward Lucian.
Lucian almost smiled.
Kevin straightened.
“I think I’m safe.”
One of the officers approached Amelia while his partner spoke with witnesses.
“Ma’am, can you tell me what happened?”
Amelia opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
The familiar terror was back.
Her heart began racing.
Three years disappeared.
She was in Raymond’s apartment again, standing beside the kitchen counter while he apologized after throwing her phone against the wall.
She remembered him saying no one would believe her.
She remembered believing him.
Lucian watched her face.
He did not answer for her.
Did not tell the officer what to write.
He simply crouched beside the stretcher so Amelia could see him.
“You decide what happens next,” he said.
The officer waited.
Amelia swallowed.
“He hit me.”
Raymond scoffed.
She continued.
“I told him to leave me alone. He grabbed my wrist. I pulled away. He punched me.”
Her voice grew steadier.
“He knew where I worked even though I never told him. I haven't spoken to him in three years.”
The officer’s expression sharpened.
“Has he threatened you before?”
“Yes.”
“Physical violence?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
Amelia stared at the ceiling.
“Enough that I left Pennsylvania without telling anyone where I was going.”
Raymond cursed.
His confidence cracked.
“She's making this up.”
The officer turned toward him.
“Sir, put your hands behind your back.”
“What?”
“You’re under arrest.”
Raymond stepped backward.
His three companions immediately moved away from him.
Interesting, Amelia thought.
Men who laughed while a woman was bleeding suddenly discovered distance when handcuffs appeared.
Raymond looked at Lucian.
“You did this.”
Lucian’s expression remained unreadable.
“No.”
He looked toward Amelia.
“She did.”
The cuffs clicked shut.
Raymond’s face twisted.
“You think this is over?”
Lucian’s security team shifted.
The officer grabbed Raymond’s arm.
But Raymond kept staring at Amelia.
“I found you once.”
Amelia went cold.
“I’ll find you again.”
Lucian’s head turned.
Every bit of warmth vanished from his eyes.
The officer pushed Raymond toward the door.
“Keep talking. It’ll look great in the report.”
But Amelia had already heard enough.
Her hands began shaking.
Lucian noticed.
The paramedic placed oxygen near her face.
“We need to go.”
Lucian nodded.
“I’m coming.”
Amelia frowned.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
That answer stayed with her.
He didn’t say she needed him.
Didn’t say she owed him.
He simply chose to come.
At Methodist Hospital, doctors diagnosed a concussion, a fractured cheekbone that wouldn’t require surgery, three stitches near her hairline, and bruising around her throat and wrist.
The police photographed everything.
Amelia hated every picture.
Each flash made her feel exposed.
Still, she allowed them.
Evidence, the officer explained.
Evidence was a strange word for pain.
After midnight, a nurse pulled the curtain aside.
“There’s someone asking to see you.”
Amelia expected Kevin.
Instead, Lucian entered carrying her purse.
“I found this beneath Table Seven.”
“Thank you.”
He placed it on the chair beside her.
His suit jacket was gone.
Amelia realized she was still wearing it.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Your jacket.”
Lucian glanced at the blood near the sleeve.
“It’s fabric.”
Something inside Amelia tightened.
Raymond would have screamed about the price.
Lucian simply sat.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Then he said, “There’s something you should know.”
Amelia’s stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Raymond wasn’t alone tonight by accident.”
She stared at him.
Lucian leaned forward.
“My people checked the three men who came with him.”
“Who are they?”
“One works collections for a loan shark in Queens. One has ties to car theft. The third is a runner for a man named Victor Sanz.”
Amelia frowned.
“I don’t know that name.”
“I do.”
There was something dark in the way Lucian said it.
“Victor has been trying to buy buildings along this block for eighteen months.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because I won’t sell.”
Amelia’s pulse quickened.
“You think Raymond came because of you?”
“I think Raymond came because of you.”
He paused.
“But I don’t think it was coincidence he suddenly found you inside a building Victor wants.”
Amelia looked down at her bruised wrist.
“You think someone told him where I was.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Silence stretched between them.
Finally, Amelia whispered, “He said he’d find me again.”
“I heard.”
“What happens when he gets out?”
Lucian’s gaze met hers.
“We make sure the law has enough evidence to keep him away from you.”
She studied him.
“That doesn’t sound very mafia-boss-like.”
For the first time, Lucian smiled.
Barely.
“People talk.”
“Are they wrong?”
His smile disappeared.
“Sometimes.”
“And sometimes?”
He looked toward the hospital window.
“Sometimes they don't know the whole story.”
Amelia should have been afraid of him.
Maybe part of her was.
But there was a difference between power that demanded fear and power that stood quietly beside you without asking for anything.
She was still learning that difference.
A nurse entered with discharge paperwork.
“You shouldn’t be alone tonight,” she told Amelia.
Amelia hesitated.
Her rented apartment suddenly seemed far too exposed.
Lucian rose.
“I have an apartment above the restaurant. Security downstairs twenty-four hours.”
Amelia stared at him.
“No.”
He nodded immediately.
“All right.”
She blinked.
“You’re not going to argue?”
“No.”
That shocked her more than if he had.
“What if I don’t have anywhere else?”
“Then I’ll have Kevin arrange a hotel in your name.”
“And if Raymond knows hotels?”
“I'll arrange it under the restaurant’s account.”
“You planned all this?”
“I planned options.”
He handed her his phone.
“You choose.”
Amelia looked at him for a long moment.
Then she whispered, “The apartment.”
Lucian nodded.
“No one goes upstairs without your permission.”
“Even you?”
“Especially me.”
For the first time since Raymond walked into Bellini House, Amelia’s shoulders relaxed.
Neither of them knew that forty minutes away, Raymond Fletcher was sitting in an interview room smiling at a detective.
Because Raymond knew something Lucian didn’t.
The attack had not been Victor Sanz’s plan.
May you like
It had been a message.
And Amelia was only the beginning.
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