I Sent the Mafia Heir to Prison, and He Came Out Wanting Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Burnt One
The mafia heir Ben put away walks into his bakery at closing, says his real name, and slides over a photo of Ben's Marshals handler dining with the heir's father.
The bell over the door rang at six fifty-eight, two minutes before closing.
Ben didn't look up from the register. "I'm out of everything but day-olds."
"Joel Kosinski."
The quarters in Ben's hand hit the floor and rolled in every direction.
Nobody had said that name out loud in four years.
He looked up.
The man in the doorway wore a black wool coat and a dark grey tie, and he was bigger than Ben remembered.
Prison had stripped the color out of him, so his dark eyes stood out in his face.
Dario Bellacosta shut the door behind him and turned the sign to CLOSED himself.
"One almond croissant," he said. "The burnt one, from the end of the tray."
Ben's mouth went dry.
There was one left, the last one, sitting in the case with its tips gone nearly black.
He had baked it that way on purpose every morning for two years, and he had never sold it to anyone.
"I don't know who you think I am," Ben said.
"You think I'm lying?" Dario came closer, unhurried, boots quiet on the tile. "You carried those into the Dirksen building in a paper bag every day for forty-one days."
"Stop."
"You sat in the witness room and ate one with your hands shaking. I could smell it from the hallway."
Ben's heart was slamming against his ribs.
He had pictured this man's face every night for five years, in every dark window and every empty doorway.
He had never pictured it this close, across a glass counter, looking at him.
"How did you find me?"
"Your address is in a file." Dario's gaze dropped to the flour on Ben's forearms, then to the pale oven scars below it. "You've got burns I didn't give you."
Ben didn't decide to move.
He came around the end of the counter in two steps.
He grabbed the grey tie in his fist and hauled Dario down until their faces were an inch apart.
He expected a fight.
He expected a hand at his throat, a gun, anything.
Dario let himself be pulled.
He bent at the waist with both palms flat on the glass, as still as a man waiting to be searched.
His breath landed warm on Ben's mouth.
He smelled like soap and cold air and something faintly metallic.
Ben's fist tightened in the silk until his knuckles went white.
"You killed a man in front of me," he said.
"I know what you saw."
"You had a gun in your hand."
"Yes."
"Then why are you in my shop?"
Dario's eyes didn't leave his.
"To see if you'd put your hand on me," he said quietly. "You did."
Heat climbed Ben's neck.
His fingers were still wrapped in the tie, and he made himself look down at them.
He let go.
Dario straightened slowly, and he did not touch the place where the silk had pulled his collar.
"I'm calling my handler," Ben said.
"Do it."
"He's a Deputy US Marshal. He'll be here in ten minutes with six more."
"Then call him."
Ben's hand shook as he grabbed his cell phone off the shelf under the register.
He found the number he had never once used in an emergency and pressed it.
It rang once.
Dario reached into his coat, slowly enough that Ben could have shouted.
He took out a single photograph and laid it face up on the glass.
He slid it across the counter with two fingers until it stopped against Ben's wrist.
It was a restaurant table, shot through a window, lit gold by a candle.
A man in a tan windbreaker sat with a glass of red wine in his hand, laughing at something.
Ben knew the windbreaker.
He knew the grey crew cut, and the lanyard tucked into the breast pocket.
Across from him, buttering a roll, sat a white-haired man in a navy cardigan with a thick gold watch.
The phone rang a second time in Ben's ear.
"That's Russ Odom," Dario said, "having dinner with my father."
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