The first gunshot struck the mirror above the bar, spraying glittering fragments across the bottles beneath it. A woman screamed. Someone knocked over a chair, and the sound of breaking glass mingled with the sudden, confused roar of people trying to reach the exits.
Lorenzo grabbed Evelyn by the upper arm and pulled her behind a marble column. She stumbled against him, the tray falling from her hand and skidding across the floor. Rafe moved in front of them, weapon raised, while Nico shouted instructions into his earpiece. The restaurant's carefully controlled elegance vanished in seconds. The chandeliers still shone, the candles still burned, but the room had become a place where every movement could be mistaken for a threat.
“Stay down,” Lorenzo ordered.
Evelyn crouched beside the column, her knees striking the cold floor. She could hear gunfire beyond the north corridor, followed by a burst of shouting. The guests nearest the bar were scrambling toward the kitchen, while two security men tried to direct people away from the locked entrance.
“Your people said the door was secured,” Lorenzo said to Rafe.
“They secured it from our side. Someone else has control of the corridor.”
“Then stop assuming you know who's on the other side.”
Rafe's jaw tightened, but he nodded and moved away.
Evelyn looked toward the dining room. Celeste was no longer at the table. Her chair lay on its side, and the emerald clutch had disappeared. Evelyn's stomach twisted. The woman had been waiting for this moment, and now she was gone.
“Your fiancée,” Evelyn said.
Lorenzo looked at her.
“She isn't here.”
“I can see that.”
“She knew it was coming.”
His gaze sharpened. “You'd better be certain before you make that accusation.”
“I saw the message on her phone. The north exit was secured, and someone had cleaners waiting at 8:55. I didn't know what it meant until I saw the men at the door.”
A fresh burst of gunfire echoed through the corridor. Lorenzo pressed his earpiece and spoke in a low voice, receiving a response that Evelyn could not hear. His expression became harder.
“North entrance is compromised,” he said. “Two shooters inside the service passage. One of ours is down, but alive. They're trying to push toward the dining room.”
“Then we need to leave,” Evelyn said.
“That's what we're doing.”
He motioned to her, and she followed him along the wall toward the kitchen. The restaurant staff had gathered behind the service counter, several of them crying. Gilbert stood near the refrigerator, pale and trembling. When he saw Evelyn, he opened his mouth as though to shout at her, then noticed Lorenzo beside her and thought better of it.
“South lobby,” Lorenzo told the kitchen supervisor. “Take the guests through the staff entrance. Keep them moving. Nobody goes near the north corridor.”
The supervisor nodded frantically.
Evelyn followed Lorenzo through the swinging doors. The kitchen smelled of hot oil, garlic, and scorched butter. A cook was crouched beside the prep table with both hands over his head. Another had dropped a pan, leaving a dark smear of sauce across the floor.
“Keep going,” Lorenzo said.
They reached the service hallway, where Nico was waiting beside a metal door. Blood stained one sleeve of his shirt, though he was moving steadily.
“It's a graze,” he said before anyone could ask. “South lobby is clear for now. But the loading dock has a vehicle blocking the gate.”
“Whose vehicle?”
“Black van. No plates.”
Lorenzo swore under his breath. “They planned both routes.”
Evelyn's thoughts raced. The north exit was blocked, and the loading dock was compromised. The south lobby might be their only way out, but the men who had organized the attack could be waiting beyond the building.
“There's another way,” she said.
Both men looked at her.
“There's a freight stairwell behind the wine storage room. It leads to the lower service level, then out to the riverwalk. The door is usually kept locked, but the kitchen staff have a key.”
Lorenzo studied her. “How do you know that?”
“Because I work here.”
“Who has the key?”
“The kitchen supervisor. Unless Gilbert took it.”
Nico turned toward the kitchen. “I'll get it.”
“Take two men,” Lorenzo ordered. “Don't use the main corridor.”
Nico disappeared through the swinging doors. Lorenzo remained beside Evelyn, listening to the distant chaos. For a moment, she became painfully aware of how close they were standing. He smelled faintly of cedar and smoke, and a thin line of blood ran across his knuckles. His composure seemed almost impossible amid the violence, but she noticed that his left hand flexed once before he forced it still.
“Your name is Evelyn Carter,” he said. “Where have I heard it before?”
She stared at him. “I don't know.”
“Carter. Your father was Daniel Carter?”
The question struck her with the force of a physical blow.
“How do you know my father's name?”
Lorenzo did not answer immediately. His eyes narrowed as he studied her face, and she saw recognition gathering behind them.
“Daniel Carter worked for a man who owed my family a considerable amount of money.”
“My father worked for plenty of people.”
“He also disappeared.”
“So I've been told.”
The words came out sharper than she intended. She had spent years hearing rumors about her father, most of them delivered by people who wanted something from her or enjoyed watching her react. She had learned to treat his name as a locked room. Anyone who claimed to know what lay inside usually wanted her to open the door for them.
Lorenzo watched her carefully. “Did he ever mention the Morettis?”
“No.”
“Did he keep records? Ledgers, account books, anything that could connect him to business dealings?”
“My father gambled away everything he touched. If he kept records, he probably bet them on a horse.”
It was a cruel answer, but Lorenzo did not smile. He appeared to be considering something he had not expected to find.
Before he could ask another question, Nico returned with the kitchen supervisor and a heavy ring of keys. The supervisor's hands shook as he identified the right one.
“The stairwell is here,” he said. “But I haven't used it since the building inspection.”
“Then tonight seems like an excellent time to start,” Lorenzo replied.
The key turned with a stiff metallic scrape. The door opened onto a narrow concrete stairwell that smelled of damp stone and river water. A single emergency light cast a weak red glow over the steps.
Lorenzo motioned for Evelyn to go first.
She hesitated. “Why me?”
“Because you know the building.”
“Or because you don't trust me enough to walk behind you?”
“Both can be true.”
She almost laughed, though there was nothing funny about the situation. She descended the stairs with Lorenzo close behind and Nico following them. Rafe remained above to coordinate the evacuation and keep the attackers away from the kitchen.
At the bottom, the passage opened into a storage area crowded with wine crates and maintenance equipment. A narrow metal door stood at the far end. Beyond it, Evelyn could hear the muted rush of the Chicago River.
Nico checked the handle and found it unlocked. He peered outside, then signaled that the path appeared clear.
Lorenzo did not move immediately. He looked back at Evelyn.
“You saved my life,” he said. “That doesn't mean I trust you.”
“I wasn't expecting a thank-you card.”
“Good. Because I don't send them.”
They stepped through the door into the cold night air. The river reflected fragments of light from the buildings above, and the wind carried the smell of wet concrete and diesel fuel. Evelyn's thin uniform offered little protection against the chill. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked toward the street, searching for a way to reach the train station without crossing the open riverwalk.
A dark sedan pulled up beside the service road. Two of Lorenzo's men emerged, scanning the area before opening the rear door.
“Get in,” Lorenzo told her.
“No.”
His expression changed slightly. “You'd rather remain outside while someone is shooting at us?”
“I'd rather know where you're taking me.”
“To a place where we can determine who tried to kill me and why you knew about it.”
“I'm a waitress, not an investigator.”
“Tonight, those distinctions have become less useful.”
Evelyn glanced toward the building. Sirens were approaching from the street, and smoke drifted from somewhere near the restaurant's main entrance. She had no money for a taxi, no safe route home, and no reason to believe the men who had attacked Lorenzo would simply forget the person who had warned him.
She climbed into the sedan.
The car pulled away from The Obsidian just as the first police vehicles reached the entrance. Through the tinted window, Evelyn saw firefighters moving toward the building and guests huddled on the sidewalk beneath silver emergency blankets. She tried to count the people she recognized from the restaurant, but the vehicle turned onto a side street before she could see clearly.
“Where's Celeste?” she asked.
“That's what I'd like to know.”
“You think she escaped?”
“I think she left before the shooting began. Whether she escaped or was collected is another question.”
Evelyn looked at him. “You were about to marry her.”
“I was about to finalize an alliance. Marriage was the public language.”
“Was any of it real?”
For the first time, Lorenzo's gaze shifted away from hers. The city lights moved across his face as the sedan passed beneath an overpass.
“I believed the alliance was real,” he said. “That was enough to make the marriage useful.”
It was not an answer to the question she had asked, and he knew it. Evelyn turned toward the window, unwilling to offer him the satisfaction of seeing her curiosity.
The sedan entered an underground garage beneath an unmarked building. Two security personnel checked the vehicle before opening a private elevator. Lorenzo led Evelyn into a room with dark wooden walls, a long table, and windows overlooking the river. It looked less like a home than a place where important decisions were made without witnesses.
A woman in a charcoal suit entered carrying a medical kit. She introduced herself as Dr. Miriam Shaw and examined Nico's arm before turning to Lorenzo.
“You need that hand cleaned,” she said.
“Later.”
“You always say later.”
“And you always ignore me.”
She looked at Evelyn. “Who is she?”
“The reason I'm not dead.”
Miriam's eyebrows rose, but she did not ask for details. She directed Evelyn toward a chair, brought her a glass of water, and placed a blanket over her shoulders. The kindness unsettled Evelyn more than the threats had. She had expected the Moretti world to be made entirely of intimidation, not practical gestures from people who seemed accustomed to surviving nights like this.
Lorenzo stood near the window while Nico spoke into a secure phone. Reports arrived in fragments: two attackers had been captured alive, one had fled, and a member of the restaurant's security team had been seriously injured. The police were investigating the shooting, but the identities of the people who had arranged it remained unclear.
“Celeste's phone?” Lorenzo asked.
“Recovered from the table,” Nico replied. “The screen is damaged, but our people are trying to extract the messages.”
“And the staff?”
“Most of them are safe. Gilbert is being questioned by the police.”
Evelyn's stomach tightened. Gilbert had seen her near the table, had questioned her movements, and might tell the police that she had delivered the warning. That could make her a witness, a suspect, or a convenient person for someone else to blame.
“I need to go home,” she said.
Lorenzo turned. “Not tonight.”
“You don't get to decide that.”
“I do if someone has already identified you as a witness in an attempted assassination.”
“Then put me in a cab and let me decide where to go.”
“You're assuming the people who arranged the attack won't follow you.”
“I'm assuming you have a habit of treating everyone around you as property.”
The room went silent. Nico stopped speaking into the phone. Miriam looked up from the medical kit.
Lorenzo's expression grew cold enough to make the air feel thinner.
“You have no idea what you're talking about.”
“Maybe not. But I know what it feels like when someone decides your life belongs to them.”
For several seconds, neither spoke. Then Lorenzo looked away first.
“You'll have a secure room, a phone, and a way to contact the police if you choose. No one will touch you. In the morning, we'll discuss what you know.”
Evelyn did not thank him. She accepted the arrangement because it was safer than pretending she had another good option.
Nico returned from the adjoining office carrying a tablet. “We recovered enough from Celeste's phone to identify the sender of the message. It came through an encrypted account linked to a man named Victor Sloane.”
Lorenzo's face changed.
“That's impossible.”
“Apparently not.”
“Who is Sloane?” Evelyn asked.
“A man who used to handle private transactions for my father,” Lorenzo said. “He disappeared from Chicago nearly ten years ago.”
Nico turned the tablet so Lorenzo could see the recovered message thread. One entry showed a time stamp from earlier that evening. Another contained a short instruction sent to Celeste less than an hour before the dinner.
The final message was older, dated six months earlier.
Find Daniel Carter's daughter. Keep her close.
Evelyn felt the blood drain from her face.
Lorenzo looked at her, and for the first time that night, his suspicion seemed to be matched by something else.
Fear.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: The Name Hidden in Celeste’s Messages Connected Evelyn to a Decade-Old Disappearance, Forcing Her to Question Everything She Had Believed About Her Father
A Single Drop of Wine Put Evelyn Carter on the Wrong Side of Chicago’s Most Dangerous Man, and the Message in Her Pocket Could Make Everything Worse
Part 2 of 20
