Chapter 5 - WHY HE WANTED THE WAITRESS
I laughed when Reed said Gabriel wanted me.
Not because it was funny.
Because sometimes the brain rejects terror by making a stupid sound.
“Me?”
Dominic looked at Reed.
“Why?”
“She heard the girls.”
“I heard children cry behind garbage.”
“That’s not all.”
Reed looked at me.
“Did Lily say anything when you first found her?”
I tried to remember.
Please don’t tell the wolf.
Mr. Reed told him where we were going.
Phones.
The van.
Then something else.
Something I barely understood at the time.
“She said the wolf wanted Daddy to hurt the Irish man.”
Dominic’s head turned sharply.
“What?”
I had forgotten it because Grace had begun losing consciousness.
“Lily said something about an Irish man.”
Reed went pale.
“Patrick Quinn.”
Dominic’s oldest rival.
The Quinn organization controlled South Side gambling and transport contracts.
Gabriel wanted Dominic to believe Quinn ordered the kidnapping.
The war.
Exactly as Reed said.
“What did Lily hear?” Dominic asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Ask her.”
“No.”
His eyes snapped toward me.
“She has been questioned enough.”
“This matters.”
“She is seven and just survived kidnapping and hypothermia.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“She’s my daughter.”
“Then act like it.”
Silence.
I had done it again.
Every guard nearby suddenly found something interesting elsewhere.
Dominic looked at me for several seconds.
Then nodded.
“Fine.”
That small concession told me more about him than the guns ever had.
We returned to the lake house.
I sat with Lily on the floor.
No interrogation.
We colored.
She drew a purple horse with six legs.
After twenty minutes, I asked casually, “Do you remember the funny things the wolf said?”
She stopped coloring.
“He yelled a lot.”
“At who?”
“Mr. Reed.”
“Anything else?”
“He said Daddy would kill Patrick.”
There it was.
“What Patrick?”
“I don’t know.”
“And then?”
“He said Chicago would burn.”
My skin prickled.
“Did he talk about you and Grace?”
Lily’s crayon stopped.
“He said we had Mommy’s pieces.”
“What pieces?”
She shrugged.
“Paper pieces.”
Shares.
Dominic’s late wife.
Trust.
Everything matched.
Then Lily whispered, “He said Daddy should have died with Mommy.”
I looked toward the doorway.
Dominic stood there.
His face had gone white.
“Your wife?”
I asked after Lily left with Grace.
Dominic stared at the floor.
“Car accident.”
“How long ago?”
“Five years.”
“Gabriel?”
“I don’t know.”
Now he did not sound like a mafia boss.
He sounded like a widower realizing grief might have been engineered.
“My wife, Sophia, was leaving a charity event.”
He swallowed.
“Her brakes failed.”
My stomach dropped.
“Was it investigated?”
“Yes.”
“By who?”
“Nathan.”
Reed had been security chief.
But if Gabriel already had influence—
Dominic looked sick.
“I blamed myself.”
“Why?”
“She wanted me out of the criminal side.”
The same old story.
“Did you refuse?”
“Yes.”
“She left angry.”
He stared toward the dark lake.
“She died forty minutes later.”
I said nothing.
“I spent five years thinking our last conversation was a fight I caused.”
His voice broke slightly.
“Maybe Gabriel killed her.”
That night, Reed confirmed what nobody wanted.
After Sophia’s death, Gabriel had insisted the vehicle be destroyed quickly following insurance inspection.
Reed had thought it was family grief.
Now?
It looked different.
Julian found records linking the mechanic who serviced Sophia’s car to a shell company funded by Gabriel.
Not proof.
Enough to hurt.
By morning, Dominic looked like he had not slept.
I made coffee.
He took it.
No thank you.
Then he said, “Why did you quit nursing school?”
I blinked.
“That transition is terrible.”
“I’m asking.”
“My mother got sick.”
“Cancer?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She died.”
“I understood.”
“You asked.”
He nodded.
“After?”
“Debt.”
“How much?”
“Why?”
“Emily.”
“Fifty-three thousand.”
His expression did not change.
“That’s why you wait tables?”
“That and I enjoy smelling like fryer oil.”
He almost smiled.
Then placed a folder on the counter.
“No.”
“You haven’t opened it.”
“I know what rich-man folders mean.”
“This one means your mother’s medical debt has already been purchased by my foundation.”
I stared.
“What?”
“It was sold to collections. We bought it.”
Anger arrived so fast I shook.
“You had no right.”
“I didn’t pay it.”
“What?”
“I said we bought it.”
“That is paying it.”
“No.”
He opened the folder.
The debt had been transferred to Vale Community Medical Foundation.
Balance due from me:
Zero.
I stared.
Dominic continued.
“The foundation purchases medical debt in low-income districts every quarter.”
“You’re telling me this was random?”
“No.”
“You selected mine.”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s charity.”
“No.”
“What is it?”
His eyes held mine.
“Something I should have been doing long before you saved my children.”
That stopped me.
He pushed another paper toward me.
A reinstatement program at Rush University College of Nursing.
Tuition assistance available through a grant funded by the same foundation.
“No guarantee.”
“What?”
“You apply.”
I looked up.
“If they accept you, the foundation funds the scholarship pool. You are not singled out.”
“You arranged this?”
“I asked what existed.”
“That is arranging.”
“I am trying very hard not to purchase you.”
Despite myself, I laughed.
His mouth moved slightly.
Then every alarm in the house activated.
Julian burst through the doorway.
“Move!”
Glass shattered.
A bullet struck the wall above us.
Dominic pushed me down.
Gunfire erupted outside.
Grace screamed upstairs.
Dominic was already moving.
“Girls!”
I ran with him.
A guard grabbed my arm.
“Safe room!”
“Girls!”
“They’re going there.”
Smoke began filling the rear hallway.
Someone had set fire to the garage.
Not an attack to kill everyone.
A distraction.
I understood that twenty seconds too late.
A man in a paramedic jacket appeared from the service stairwell.
“Miss Parker!”
I turned instinctively.
Mistake.
May you like
He hit me.
The last thing I heard before everything went black was Dominic shouting my name.
