“Don’t Trust Her,” the Waitress Whispered—Then the Mafia Boss’s Fiancée Lost Control

Evelyn Price drove as if every red light were a personal insult.

She took side streets through the early-morning traffic, changed lanes without signaling, and checked the rearview mirror often enough to make Nadia suspect she was accustomed to being followed.

Nadia sat rigidly in the passenger seat, one hand pressed to her wound.

“Hospital,” she said.

“Not yet.”

“I’m losing blood.”

“I know.”

“Then stop arguing.”

Evelyn glanced at her.

“You have your brother’s temper.”

“And you have his habit of answering questions with insults.”

For the first time, Evelyn smiled.

It vanished quickly.

She turned into the service entrance of a small private clinic on the North Side. A doctor met them at the door, took one look at Nadia, and ordered a nurse to bring a stretcher.

While the wound was cleaned and closed, Evelyn waited in the corridor.

When Nadia emerged an hour later, pale and exhausted, she found a cup of coffee beside her bed.

“You knew Cristian,” she said.

Evelyn sat in the visitor’s chair.

“I trained him for part of his undercover assignment. I wasn’t his handler, and I didn’t approve every decision he made. But I knew him well enough to recognize when his reports stopped sounding like him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was in danger?”

“Because I didn’t know how much danger he was in until it was too late.”

Nadia stared at her.

“Convenient.”

“Fair.”

Evelyn removed a small envelope from her handbag.

“Three weeks before he died, Cristian asked me to preserve a copy of an evidence index. He said someone inside the investigation was altering records.”

“Who?”

“He didn’t know. He suspected a financial liaison connected to the Carrera family.”

“Isabel.”

“Possibly. But your brother was careful about naming people. He believed she was passing information to someone else.”

“Who?”

“That’s what we’re trying to establish.”

Nadia opened the envelope.

Inside was a printed list of shipment dates, account references, and a series of initials. One appeared repeatedly: R.V.

She recognized the pattern from Cristian’s notebook.

“Those transfers were routed through companies that don’t exist anymore,” Nadia said. “I traced them to an old freight terminal on the river.”

Evelyn nodded.

“Terminal Twelve.”

Nadia looked up sharply.

“You know about it?”

“I know it was supposed to have been closed two years ago. I also know trucks still enter the property at night.”

“Who owns it?”

“On paper? A company controlled by Vega Maritime. In practice, we don’t know.”

Nadia felt the room tilt.

“Then Marcos is involved.”

“Or someone is using his company.”

“Those are not the same thing.”

“No,” Evelyn agreed. “Which is why we need proof.”

A knock interrupted them.

A nurse entered with a phone.

“Someone called asking for Ms. Reyes. They said they were family.”

Nadia went still.

“Did they give a name?”

The nurse checked the note.

“Daniel Reyes.”

Nadia’s father.

She had not spoken to him in six months.

Her father had gambled away their savings, lied about the debt, and then begged Cristian to help him recover the money. The debt had become the excuse used to pressure Cristian into a meeting that he never returned from.

Nadia took the phone.

“Hello?”

A man breathed on the other end.

Then her father whispered, “Nadia, listen carefully. I know who betrayed your brother.”

A loud crash sounded behind him.

He gasped.

“They’re here.”

The line went dead.

Nadia threw off the blanket.

Evelyn caught her arm.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“My father is in danger.”