Chapter 6 - A Name He Would Not Bargain With
Across the city, Damian entered a private dining room at Vincent’s steakhouse.
Four men sat around the table. Vincent occupied the largest chair, a glass of red wine beside his plate. Carmine looked up first, then studied Damian’s face with interest he did not bother to conceal.
“You made an impression last night,” Vincent said.
Damian sat.
“So I hear.”
“Arthur says you suspended his debt.”
“I did.”
“And Miller?”
“Won’t be approaching Naomi again.”
Vincent leaned back.
“That girl was supposed to make things quieter.”
Damian placed his napkin on his lap.
“She didn’t create the disturbance.”
Carmine gave a thin smile.
“Depends on your perspective.”
Damian looked at him.
The smile disappeared.
Vincent tapped one thick finger against the table.
“We’re discussing judgment. You make a spectacle over an ex-boyfriend, people start wondering what else will distract you.”
“Then they should wonder why a man thought he could threaten someone attached to this family without consequence.”
“Someone attached,” Vincent repeated. “That’s an expensive way to describe a temporary arrangement.”
Damian’s hand stopped beside his water glass.
Vincent saw it.
“So pay her off,” he continued. “End the complication. Find someone without this kind of history.”
For several seconds, Damian heard Naomi’s voice more clearly than Vincent’s.
He was keeping a bill.
He set down the glass.
“Her history isn’t yours to price.”
Carmine shifted in his chair.
Vincent laughed once, without humor.
“You’ve become sentimental.”
“Careful,” Damian said.
The word changed the room.
He reached into his jacket and placed a photograph on the table.
Vincent looked down.
His adult daughter stood outside her law school in Boston, carrying books beneath one arm. Enzo was visible across the street.
The old man’s face lost color.
Damian watched him understand the distance between the people he dismissed and the people he loved.
Then he heard himself breathing.
He had brought the photograph to make a point. He had told himself it was information, proximity, leverage. Looking at Vincent’s face, he saw another name being made useful in a room where its owner had no voice.
Naomi’s words returned again.
Protection should still leave me a life.
Damian picked up the photograph.
“Your daughter is safe,” he said.
Vincent stared at him.
“She remains outside this conversation. So does Naomi.”
“You threaten me, then tell me—”
“I’m telling you exactly where this ends.”
Damian tore the photograph once and placed both pieces in his pocket.
“No approaches to her shop. No pressure through her employer. No questions delivered by men pretending to be friends.”
The room stayed silent.
“If you have a concern about my decisions,” he said, “bring it to me.”
He stood.
Vincent’s anger had not disappeared, and Damian did not pretend it had. Nothing about the exchange would vanish simply because he had stopped before taking it farther.
At the door, Carmine spoke.
“She must mean a great deal.”
Damian turned.
“Yes,” he said.
It was the first time he had admitted it without disguising the truth as strategy.
That evening, Naomi asked Leo to stop at her apartment.
He looked at her through the mirror.
“Of course.”
No phone call to request permission followed.
She noticed.
Inside, the rooms smelled faintly stale, as though she had been away much longer than a day. Her work boots stood beside the radiator. The failed concealer lay uncapped on the bathroom shelf.
Naomi put it away.
She changed into clean clothes, packed enough things for several nights, and took the small photograph of her father from the shelf above the kitchen table. Before leaving, she checked the lock and sent Ruth a message saying she was done for the day.
Then she sat on the edge of her bed.
She could stay here.
The knowledge mattered.
There would still be fear. There would be calls to return, practical things to arrange, perhaps a lock to replace. None of that made the apartment impossible.
She looked at the ring on her hand.
For months, she had called it a prop because admitting she liked its weight would have made the arrangement more dangerous. She had learned Damian’s schedule, the way he took his coffee, the fact that he became quieter when he was tired. She had found herself listening for his car long before Caleb returned.
What had happened last night had exposed those feelings.
May you like
It had not created them.
Naomi stood, picked up her bag, and went downstairs.
