Poor Waitress Answered a 2 A.M. Call — Then Found the Mafia Boss Bleeding

PART 5

Roman insisted Ava recover somewhere safe.

Ava refused.

Roman insisted again.

Ava refused harder.

Then Sophie climbed onto Ava’s hospital bed, put both small hands on Ava’s cheeks, and said, “Please come home with us, Aunt Ava. Daddy’s house is too big when you’re not there.”

Ava lost.

Roman did not take her back to Hawthorne Ridge. The mansion was a crime scene, and Marcus Vale was still missing. Instead, he brought them to a lake house in northern Wisconsin, hidden behind pines and private roads, with glass walls facing water so clear it reflected the sky like a second heaven.

Ava had never been anywhere so quiet.

At first, she moved through the house like an intruder. She washed dishes no one asked her to wash. She folded blankets already folded. She apologized for eating too little and for sleeping too much.

Roman noticed everything.

Fresh flowers appeared by her bed each morning. The kitchen stocked soup she could stomach. A soft cream sweater appeared over the back of her chair after she shivered once on the porch.

“You don’t have to buy kindness,” Ava told him one evening.

Roman stood beside the fireplace, one hand in his pocket. “I don’t know another way to answer it.”

“Try saying thank you.”

His mouth twitched.

“Thank you.”

The words sounded unfamiliar on his tongue.

Days passed.

Sophie healed in small pieces. She stopped waking up screaming every night. She laughed again when Ava made pancakes shaped like lopsided stars. She drew pictures of the lake, the house, her father, Ava, and a baby deer she insisted lived in the woods.

Roman healed differently.

He took calls behind closed doors. Men came and went. Victor arrived twice with files and left with bloodless fury in his face. The hunt for Marcus continued.

Ava did not ask details. She already knew enough about Roman’s world to know that answers could stain.

But at night, after Sophie slept, Roman and Ava sat by the fire.

He told her about his ex-wife, Natalie. Beautiful. Educated. Poisonous. She had married him for access, sold secrets to enemies, and left when Roman discovered the betrayal. Sophie had been two. Roman had never fully trusted another woman after that.

Ava told him about her parents dying in the fire, about orphanage hunger, about Lily and the promise.

“You wanted to be a nurse,” Roman said.

“I still do.”

“Then you will.”

Ava laughed softly. “That simple?”

“To me? Yes.”

“To me, no.” She looked at him. “I don’t want a life handed to me because I gave you a kidney.”

Roman’s eyes darkened. “That is not what this is.”

“Then what is it?”

He did not answer.

The silence grew warm and dangerous.

One night, Sophie had a nightmare. Ava reached her first, sitting on the edge of the bed and singing the old lullaby her mother used to sing before the fire. Roman stood in the doorway, watching.

When Sophie slept again, Ava stepped into the hall and nearly collided with him.

He looked shaken.

“What?” she whispered.

“No one has sung in my house in years.”

“That’s sad.”

“Yes.”

His hand rose, then stopped near her face. A man who had taken empires without permission was asking permission to touch one woman’s cheek.

Ava leaned into his palm.

Roman kissed her like restraint losing a battle.

The kiss was not gentle at first. It was fear, gratitude, hunger, and disbelief. Then Ava made a small sound, and he softened, holding her as if she might break and as if breaking her would destroy him too.

For one week, the lake house felt like a dream.

Then the dream exploded.

Gunfire shattered the glass wall just after midnight.

Roman threw Ava to the floor and shouted for Sophie. Victor’s men fired back from the hallway. Ava crawled through broken glass, ignoring pain in her palms, and reached Sophie’s room.

Sophie was under the bed, shaking.

Ava pulled her out and pushed her into the hidden pantry Roman had shown her only once.

“Stay here. No matter what you hear.”

“Aunt Ava—”

“Stay.”

Ava grabbed the first weapon she saw: a heavy iron fireplace poker.

When she returned to the living room, smoke filled the air. Two of Roman’s men were down. Roman stood near the shattered glass, one hand pressed to his surgical scar, blood blooming through his shirt.

Marcus Vale stepped from the dark porch, gun in one hand, knife in the other.

He was handsome in a dead-eyed way, with snow on his shoulders and murder in his smile.

“The waitress,” Marcus said. “I should have killed you first.”

Ava lifted the poker with both hands.

Marcus laughed.

Roman moved.

Too slow.

Pain weakened him. Marcus struck him hard, sending him against the table. Ava screamed and swung the poker. It caught Marcus across the wrist. The gun fell.

Marcus lunged for her.

Roman rose behind him with the cold silence of a man who had earned every terrible nickname. He seized Marcus by the throat and drove him backward into the stone fireplace.

Marcus slashed with the knife.

Ava grabbed a vase of flowers and smashed it over his head.

The distraction lasted one second.

Roman needed less.

Marcus fell.

He did not rise.

The silence after was worse than the gunfire.

Sophie’s small voice came from behind Ava. “Is it over?”

Roman looked at Ava, then at his daughter, then at the blood on his own hands.

“Yes,” he said, voice rough. “It’s over.”

But Ava saw the truth in his eyes.