THE DON AND THE ALPHA: MY BEAUTIFUL RUIN

Chapter 2—Starting Over

Aelindra POV

Three weeks in Valerio and I had the routine down to something close to science.

Six forty-five, alarm. Six fifty, coffee, black, no sugar because I had run out of sugar on day two and never bothered to replace it. Seven thirty, shower. Eight, out the door. The walk to Cielo took twenty-two minutes if I went through the market street and seventeen if I cut through the alley behind the pharmacy. I always went through the market street. The extra five minutes mattered more than I could explain to anyone.

The apartment was small with bare walls and second-hand furniture, and a window that looked out onto a fire escape and a slice of sky that turned orange in the evenings if the clouds were cooperative. I had not put anything on the walls yet and I kept telling myself I was still settling in, that three weeks was still settling in, that I would get around to it eventually.

My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter while I was pulling on my shoes.

Nyla. Voice note, forty seconds. I pressed play.

"Good morning. Just checking in. Eat something real today, not just coffee. I mean it." A pause. "I love you. Call me later."

Short. Careful. Nyla had been careful with me since that night in a way that made my chest ache slightly every time I noticed it, like I was something that needed handling. I understood why. I just did not know how to tell her that careful felt almost as heavy as the thing she was being careful about.

Vex's message came in three minutes later, not one voice note but a series of them.

"Okay so I just saw the most unhinged thing on my way to work," a pause, shuffling sounds, "actually that is not why I am calling. I am calling to check on you but I am also telling you this story because it will make you laugh and you need to laugh." Another pause. "Anyway this man had a live chicken. In a bag. On public transport. A LIVE CHICKEN, Aelindra."

I laughed. Quietly, into my coffee cup, alone in my bare little kitchen. It lasted about four seconds before it faded and the apartment went quiet again.

She was right. I needed that.

I had landed the job at Cielo ten days after arriving in Valerio, which I considered a personal achievement given that I had walked in off the street with a resume that was frankly embarrassing for a waitressing application. The manager, a compact no-nonsense woman named Sera, had looked at my qualifications for a long moment and then looked at me.

"You are overqualified for this," she said.

"I know."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I need the work and you have a vacancy." I held her gaze. "I will not be a problem. I just need something that keeps me busy."

She studied me for another moment. Whatever she found in my face must have satisfied her because she handed me a uniform and told me to come in Thursday.

Cielo was not the kind of restaurant where you forgot your order or leaned against the wall during slow periods. It was white tablecloths and low lighting and a wine list longer than most novels, the kind of place where the food was extraordinary and the clientele expected to be treated like they were the most important people in any room they entered. Which, in Valerio, most of them probably were. I was overqualified for the job and also, in the first few days, genuinely humbled by how much there was to learn about doing it properly.

It kept me busy. That was the point.

It kept me out of my own head. That was the real point.

I did not think about Ironmoor. I did not let myself. Not the gathering, not the green dress, not the way his voice had sounded, level and certain and completely unmerciful. Not Vessa Darkmore lifting her chin when he said her name. I had packed all of it into a box somewhere in the back of my chest and I had not opened it and I was not going to. Not today. Not yet.

Nyla never mentioned him. Vex never mentioned him. The silence between the three of us on that particular subject was so complete and so agreed upon that it had its own weight. I appreciated it more than I knew how to say.

***

I got to Cielo with four minutes to spare.

"You look tired," said Cara, one of the other waitresses, handing me my section card.

"Thank you, Cara."

"I am not being mean, I am being observant. Table nine has already asked for still water three times and we are not even open yet."

The evening filled up fast the way Friday evenings at Cielo always did. I moved through my section with the particular focus I had developed over the past two weeks, the kind that left no room in your head for anything except the next table, the next order, the next thing that needed doing. It was a small mercy and I accepted it without question.

I was refilling water at table four when the door opened and the energy in the room shifted.

Not dramatically, not the way it did in stories, just a subtle pulling of attention, the way a room adjusts itself when something has changed without anyone deciding to change it. I glanced over without meaning to.

Four men in suits that did not look like they had been bought off any rack I had ever seen moved through the restaurant the way water moves around stone, unhurried and certain, the kind of movement that came from knowing that rooms arranged themselves around you and not the other way around. Sera was already crossing the floor toward them, her professional smile three degrees warmer than the one she used for ordinary guests.

They took the corner table, the one tucked slightly apart from the rest of the room, private without being hidden, the table we had standing instructions to keep clear on Friday evenings. I had not known why until now.

Cara appeared at my elbow. "Corner table is in your section tonight," she said, in a tone that suggested she was either doing me a favour or the opposite.

"Why?"

"Sera's instructions." She was already walking away. "Good luck."

I straightened my apron, picked up a menu and a notepad and crossed the restaurant floor toward the corner table without thinking twice.

I did not know whose table I was walking toward.

I did not know that yet.