Chapter 1 - The Weight of an April Rain|
The bullet hit exactly where his head had been.
One second, Dimitri Vulov was sitting in the back booth of a rain-soaked Brooklyn diner, calm as a king in a place that smelled like burnt coffee and old grease. The next, I had both hands buried in his expensive jacket, dragging the most feared man in New York under a sticky table while gunfire tore open the night around us.
I did not know, in that instant, that saving his life would destroy mine.
I only saw the gun through the rain-streaked window.
I only saw the red laser dot appearing on his charcoal lapel.
And I only knew that if I didn’t move, Dimitri Vulov was going to die in front of me.
At 3:00 that morning, I was not brave. I was exhausted.
The diner smelled like burnt coffee and broken dreams, and I had been wiping the same spot on the counter for the third time, watching the circle of my rag erase absolutely nothing. Not the stain. Not the ache in my feet. Not the fact that my rent was two weeks late and my landlord had started looking at me like patience was a favor he had no intention of extending again.
The fluorescent lights above me buzzed with their usual sick rhythm, throwing pale shadows across red vinyl booths that had seen better decades. Outside, rain hammered the windows hard enough to turn the street into a smear of neon and darkness.
Everything hurt.
My feet. My back. My hands. The place behind my ribs where hope used to live.
That was what double shifts did to you when you worked six days a week. You learned to smile when men snapped their fingers. You learned to pretend not to hear comments whispered just loudly enough to make you feel small. You learned that invisibility was not a curse.
It was protection.
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I was good at being invisible. Just another waitress in a stained apron. Another tired face people looked through instead of at. Another woman pouring coffee at 3:00 in the morning for drunks, taxi drivers, and lonely people who came looking for fluorescent companionship.
Then the bell above the door chimed.
