I Locked Two Rival Mob Heirs In, So Neither Lets Me Go novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Truce Dinner
A storm blacks out the Truce Dinner, forty guns come out, and Mari gives the two heirs a way to leave the ballroom with their pride, leads them into the linen room and locks the door with the key down her blouse.
The lights went out in the middle of the toast.
The storm had been chewing on the bay since noon, and it finally took the whole grid.
Two hundred people stood in the black ballroom with their glasses in the air.
Then I heard the first safety click off, and then dozens more on both sides of the room.
I was the banquet captain, standing between the two head tables with a tray of sake cups and a flashlight.
This was the dinner of the truce.
Thirty-one years ago two crime families ended a war in this ballroom.
Every first Friday of April since, they had come back to eat one meal at the same table.
I had worked it four years running.
Nobody had ever pulled a gun at it.
Someone fired into the ceiling, and plaster rained on the white tablecloths.
People screamed.
I thumbed my flashlight on and swept it across the room.
Forty men were on their feet with their weapons out, half of them in aloha shirts.
Down the aisle between the two head tables, two men were walking toward each other.
Dean Higa was thirty-six, the Higa heir, in a black suit with no tie, and his pistol was held low and perfectly still.
Manny Rapoza was thirty-three, the Rapoza heir, huge and sunburned in a cream linen jacket, and his gun hung from two fingers.
Both of them were looking at the other and neither of them was blinking.
I knew what would happen.
Neither would stop first, because forty men were watching.
The old fathers had both gone under the head table, and I could hear them breathing down there.
I set my tray on the nearest chair.
Then I walked into the aisle and put my flashlight on their faces.
"Gentlemen," I said.
My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"The hotel has a rule for a blackout. The captain runs the room."
Manny squinted into the beam and gave me a crooked grin that did not reach his eyes.
"Mari, honey, get out of the way."
He knew my name.
I did not know why that surprised me.
"I need two men to carry the emergency lanterns up from the linen room," I said.
"It takes two, and nobody else knows where they are."
Dean did not speak.
His eyes moved from Manny to me, slow and dark.
"You're sending us for lanterns," he said.
"I'm sending you to the linen room, together, and nobody has to lower a gun in front of his men."
I held the beam on the floor between their shoes.
"You can walk out of this ballroom on your own feet," I said.
"Or you can shoot each other in front of two hundred guests and my manager."
Nobody moved.
Then Manny holstered his gun, and I felt the whole room let go.
"After you, Higa," he said.
"After you," Dean said.
Dean put his pistol away, and his hand came out and closed around my wrist.
It was warm and dry and hard, and it did not hurt.
"Lead," he said.
Manny's palm landed in the small of my back, huge and hot through my jacket.
"Go on, Mari," he said close to my ear.
I led them out of the ballroom with both of them touching me.
The service corridor was black and smelled of fryer oil and rain.
Their men came after us in a crowd.
They stopped at the swinging doors, because I turned and said "Stay there" in the voice I use on waiters.
They stayed.
My master key ring jangled.
The linen room was the third door on the left.
It was a windowless concrete room with steel shelves of towels and tablecloths up to the ceiling.
I pushed the door open and the two heirs ducked in after me, both too big for it.
I looked back once.
Forty men were standing in the dark with their weapons at their sides, watching the three of us go.
I shut the door.
I turned the deadbolt, pulled the key out and put it down the front of my blouse.
Dean went very still in the dark.
Manny laughed once, low.
I put my back to the door and lifted my chin.
"Nobody follows anybody out of here until you two are done," I said.
"Whoever wants out can take it off me."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend