Chapter 1 - The Night the Baby Reached for Me
I want to tell you about the night a baby broke me in front of the most dangerous man in the city.
It was a Thursday at Bellamy's, the kind of restaurant where the light is gold and the tablecloths are so white they almost hum.
I had been waitressing there for three weeks, and I was good at my job.
I smiled at everyone.
That was the rule I lived by, because a smile kept people from asking questions.
Table twelve was his table.
Everyone in the building called him Mr. Vittorio, and nobody said the name loudly.
He was forty, maybe, in a navy suit with the collar of his shirt open, and there was a black eagle tattooed along the left side of his neck that you only saw when he turned his head.
On the back of his right hand there was ink too, fine black work, and I noticed it because his hand was doing something I did not expect.
It was holding a baby.
She was eleven months old, with soft dark hair that came just past her ears and big brown eyes and round little cheeks, wearing a cream dress with lace at the hem.
He was looking down at her the way men like him are not supposed to look at anything.
I walked up from behind his right shoulder, the way I'd been trained, and I stopped at the table with my smile already in place.
"Good evening, can I get you something to drink?"
He lifted his head and looked at me.
I want to be honest with you, the way I couldn't be that night.
I knew who he was before I ever took the job.
I'll explain that part soon.
What matters right now is the baby.
She turned her head, and her eyes locked onto me.
Not past me.
Not through me.
At me.
Her little mouth fell open, and she raised one small arm straight up in my direction, fingers spread wide, reaching.
The father glanced at the baby, then back at me, and said it almost like an apology.
"She never lets strangers touch her, only her mother."
I did the thing you do in restaurants.
I lowered my hand near hers, slow and easy, letting her decide.
I did not reach for her.
She decided.
Her tiny fingers closed around my index finger, and she held on with that surprising, serious grip babies have, like she had been waiting all night for exactly that finger.
I looked down at her hand wrapped around mine, and I smiled.
And then my smile stopped working.
I don't know how else to describe it.
It just died on my face, and my eyes filled up, right there, over a table with white linen and expensive wine, in front of a man whose name people were afraid to say.
Because that baby's face did something to me.
She looked like someone I had buried six months ago.
Not exactly.
Not a copy.
But close enough that my chest caved in.
Mr. Vittorio looked up at me, and I watched the warmth drain out of his face and something careful and sharp come into it.
His eyebrows drew together, just slightly.
"Then why is she looking at you like that?"
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
My mouth was full of my sister's name, and if I opened it, that name was going to come out, and I had spent six months making sure it never came out in front of anyone.
I looked down at the baby one more second, then I pulled my hand back, gentle, and I walked away from table twelve before I could cry in front of him.
I hid in the service station by the kitchen, folding napkins that were already folded, and I got myself back together the way I'd practiced.
I thought that was the end of it.
A strange moment.
A tired waitress with an old wound.
I was wrong.
Because a few minutes later, Marco, the floor manager, came past me, and he wasn't looking at me at all.
He was looking at table twelve, where Mr. Vittorio was speaking to him in a voice too low for me to hear.
But I caught the shape of it when Marco came back, and later that night Marco told me the words himself, because by then it mattered.
Mr. Vittorio had said, quietly, "Find out everything about the new waitress.
Before her shift ends."
I didn't know that yet when I clocked out that night.
All I knew was that a baby had reached for me, and I had almost fallen apart in front of her father.
I got in my car in the parking garage, and I sat there with my hands on the wheel, not driving.
Because here is the thing I haven't told you yet.
I hadn't come to that restaurant by accident.
I had come looking for a name.
And I had just spent ten minutes holding the hand of that name's daughter.
