CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO RIVAL MAFIA BOSSE

Episode 3: Chapter 3: The Offer

Nobody moved.

The oven timer kept shrieking, and Amara found she could not remember how to make her legs work. Two men stood on either side of a pane of glass, and neither blinked.

"She stays here," Dante said at last, flat as a closing door.

"She stays nowhere," Viktor replied pleasantly. "A girl who watched you drown a man in the river is not a guest, Marchetti. She is a weapon. And I do not leave loaded weapons in the hands of my enemies."

A weapon. The word hit Amara harder than the knife in her fist.

"Excuse me," she said, and was startled by how steady it came out. "I'm standing right here."

Both men looked at her.

"I am not a weapon. I'm not a problem, and I'm not yours." She pointed the knife at Dante, then, after a moment's hesitation, at the glass where Viktor stood.

"Either of you."

Silence. Then Viktor laughed, low and delighted, and Dante's eyes narrowed, not with anger but with something closer to irritation, as though a piece on the board had spoken out of turn.

"She has teeth," Viktor said.

"She has a knife for sponge cake," Dante said.

"Still."

Dante turned the lock and pulled the door open. He did it without warmth, like a man opening a negotiation. Viktor stepped inside, and the bakery, small and warm and smelling of vanilla, suddenly felt like a room where an execution had been scheduled and then postponed.

Viktor took in the shop with lazy interest. He lifted a lemon tart from the display, sniffed it, and set it back. "You have been busy tonight, Dante. A body in the alley. A witness in the kitchen. Messy."

"It was handled."

"Obviously. Until she looked out the window." Viktor smiled at Amara. "Which is why I came. A tidy man like you would have solved this in ten minutes."

Dante said nothing.

"And yet," Viktor continued, "she is still breathing."

Amara's blood went cold. She had been so busy being afraid of Dante's gentleness that she hadn't asked the obvious question. Why hadn't he done it already?

"Careful," Dante said, very quietly.

"I only observe." Viktor spread his hands. "A man who kills for a living does not hesitate over a baker. So either you are growing soft, or you are growing curious." His pale eyes glinted. "Both are weaknesses."

"I do not have weaknesses."

"Then prove it. Hand her over, and we will call tonight an unfortunate misunderstanding."

"And what would you do with her?"

"Keep her safe." Viktor's smile didn't move. "Naturally."

"You would trade her to the police to bring me down."

"I would," Viktor agreed, with no shame at all. "Unless she is useful for something better. She is a witness to the murder of Tomas Reyes, Marchetti's accountant, and the man who was about to testify against both of us. Do you see now why this is not about a girl?"

Amara went still.

Both of us.

Dante's gaze flicked toward her for half a second, a flash of something unguarded, and then it was gone. She would never have caught it if she hadn't been watching his face for the signs of her own death.

"This," Dante said coldly, "is about an inconvenience that I will resolve. Alone."

"Resolve," Viktor repeated. "What a delicate word."

"Enough." Amara set the knife down on the counter, because her hands were trembling too badly to hold it and she refused to let them see that. "You are both talking about me like I'm a parcel at customs. I have a wedding cake due at nine and a landlord who thinks I'm dealing drugs. I don't care about your accountant. I don't care about your war. I want you both out."

Neither man moved.

Then Dante spoke, his voice almost distant. "You cannot go home."

"Why not?"

"Because by sunrise," he said, "every man in this city with a gun will know your name. Mine and his." He glanced at Viktor, and for the first time that night, they seemed to share something: an ugly, mutual understanding. "Whoever hired Reyes' killer will want you silenced before either of us can use you."

"Hired?" Amara's voice thinned. "I thought you killed him."

Dante's expression didn't change. "I did not."

The air in the shop shifted.

Viktor's smile faded, and for a heartbeat he looked at Dante the way one wolf looks at another when both have just heard something rustle in the trees.

"Interesting," he said softly. "Then who did?"

The window exploded.

Glass sprayed across the tiles. Amara hit the floor before she knew she was falling, and something heavy and warm covered her. A body, a black coat, a hand pressing her head to the ground, and cedar and rain and the thunder of gunfire.

"Stay down," Dante growled in her ear.

Across the room, Viktor had already drawn a pistol from somewhere inside his shirt. He fired twice at the street, never losing that terrible, easy calm. "I thought you cleaned the alley, Marchetti!"

"It's not mine!"

"Then whose?"

A third bullet punched through the wedding cake. Five tiers of sugar and cream collapsed in a slow, silent avalanche, and Amara, crushed under a mafia boss, watched a night's careful work slide to ruin and thought, absurdly, of Chiamaka's tears.

Then the gunfire stopped. Tires screamed away down Delancey Row.

For a long moment, nobody spoke. Dante's weight lifted from her slowly, and she found his hand still resting at the back of her head. She noticed that his fingers weren't quite steady, and she noticed that he noticed, and he took the hand away fast, as if burned.

"Are you hurt?" he asked. It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

"No."

"Good." His voice hardened at once. "Then you are still useful."

Viktor crouched beside them, brushing glass from his sleeve. A small cut bled along his cheekbone, and he wiped it away with his thumb, almost with admiration. He looked from Dante to Amara, and the mask finally slipped, just enough to show the calculation underneath.

"Well," he said. "Someone wants her dead more than we want her alive."

He stood and held out a gloved hand.

"Come with me, Miss Okafor. Or go with him. But choose quickly, because the next bullet won't hit a cake."

Amara looked at the hand. Then at Dante, who didn't offer his. He simply watched her with that unreadable, black-ice stare, like a man who had never in his life asked for anything and would not start tonight.

Behind them, the ruined wedding cake settled with a soft, sad sigh.

She had ten seconds to decide whose enemy she would become.