The Don's Prisoner

How many jobs can one person run inside somebody else's building before the arithmetic catches them, and what happens when the man who owns the building works it out first?


The last time Gabriella Moretti wore a waitress uniform she was seventeen and stealing tips out of her father's coat pockets. This one fits better. White button-down, black slacks, a bow tie she knotted three times in the alley behind the club. The name tag says Carla, a small private joke, borrowed from the agent who tried to recruit her six months ago. She declined. She kept the burner number.


The social club sits on a dead-end block, unmarked except for a wrought-iron sign in curling script. Nobody eats there. The kitchen has been closed for years, but the back room stays open every night until the last bottle is empty and the last deal is done.


She pushes through the service entrance with a tray of empty glasses and her heart doing the thing it always does before a job, settling into a low steady hum beneath her ribs. The scar on her left palm itches. It always does.


Fifteen feet away is an office, and in the third drawer of the desk in that office is the underside where the bug goes. Plant it. Walk out. Let somebody else handle the rest.


She has done this a dozen times.


What follows: a debt that never sleeps, the mercy of a broken man, a wolf at the door, a pendulum, the bullet nobody sees coming, and a cradle built for a mole.


*He made a sound low in his throat and pulled her closer.*


Vito De Luca will hand back the club, the block and the name. He will put his own cousin on the floor in front of witnesses and explain himself to nobody. The first person who tries to take her out of that building without her consent is going to discover exactly how little of his patience was ever real.