THE GIRL WHO WALKED INTO THE LION’S DEN
They stared at the little girl as if she were a moth daring to flap its wings around a chandelier. Then Giovani lifted his head, and the candlelight caught his eyes. They weren’t cruel.
Just controlled. Trained. “What’s your name, piccola?” he asked, his tone the kind used by men who are used to soft, unquestioned authority.
“Emma Rodriguez,” she answered. The name dropped into the air like a small stone into still water. One of Giovani’s nephews twitched in recognition.
He’d once run into Rosa’s flower shop to grab a dozen roses with a scribbled note from his mother. Familiarity washes faces in different ways—some go pale, some go gentle. “Rosa’s girl,” the nephew murmured.
Emma’s knees felt like they were made of jelly, but she moved forward anyway. The closer she came, the stranger the room felt—the tablecloth patterns grew larger, the forks and knives glinted like little moons. She looked straight at Giovani and the other men and forced herself to say what she’d seen.
“Under your cars,” she said carefully, holding on to each word so it wouldn’t shake loose. “Detective Hall and his partner… they had packages. They put them under your car.
Behind my mama’s shop.”
It was as though someone had reached into every chest in that room and turned the heat down. Conversations thinned. Cutlery clicked once and went still.
A server froze mid-step. Giovani didn’t leap to his feet or pound the table. He simply folded his hands in front of him and watched Emma the way someone might study a delicate map.
“Detective Hall?” the youngest man at the table repeated. “Hall from narcotics?”
Emma nodded. “Yes.
They said…” Her voice cracked. “They said you were poison in this city. That it was time to cut out the cancer.”
THE RAID THAT DIDN’T GO AS PLANNED
Outside, unmarked cars slid against the curb as if they’d been rehearsing the move all week.
Men in plain suits stepped out, bulletproof vests half-hidden, night-vision gear glinting under the streetlights. At their front walked Detective Marcus Hall, the same face that had smiled from breakfast TV segments about “major busts.” He pushed through the restaurant door full of that last bit of borrowed confidence. “Giovanni Vitali,” he called out, deliberately using the full name like a headline.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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