CHAPTER 1 The Billionaire Boss’s Family Called Her an Alley Girl—Until the Waitress Who Told Him to Breathe Exposed the Drink They Served at His Own Table
The Billionaire Boss’s Family Called Her an Alley Girl—Until the Waitress Who Told Him to Breathe Exposed the Drink They Served at His Own Table
The first thing Naomi Brooks noticed was not the bloodless color of the man’s face or the rain soaking through his expensive suit. It was the sound he made when his shoulder struck the brick wall beside the restaurant’s back door, a broken scrape of breath that did not belong to a drunk man, a sleeping man, or a man who could be safely ignored.
She had taken the service alley because she had missed the last bus again, and because the alley behind Calder Avenue was the quickest way from June’s Counter to the cheaper stop six blocks south. Her mother hated that shortcut. Naomi hated it too, especially after midnight, when the city of Bellridge, Illinois, lost its polished daytime manners and showed its wet trash bags, locked doors, and men who watched too long from parked cars. But her feet hurt from a double shift, her coat was thin, and the apple pie Mrs. June had wrapped for her mother was getting damp under her arm.
Then the man fell.
At first Naomi thought a kitchen worker had slipped while taking out the trash. She stepped closer, cautious, ready to say, “You okay?” from a safe distance. But when the alley light flickered over him, she saw the black wool coat, the cuff links, the silver watch flashing under rainwater, and the hard, terrified grip of his hand against his chest.
“Sir?” she called.
He tried to answer. Nothing came out but air.
Naomi dropped the pie, rushed to him, and fell to her knees in a puddle so cold it bit through her jeans. “Open your eyes, sir. Can you hear me?”
His eyelids fluttered. His skin, when she touched his cheek, was not only cold from the rain. It had the strange waxy chill she remembered from the nursing assistant videos she watched late at night, the ones she studied because community college was not a dream to her, it was a plan written in blue ink on a calendar above her desk.
“Please look at me,” she said, forcing her voice not to shake. “Can you squeeze my hand if your chest hurts?”
His fingers twitched weakly around hers.
“Okay. Okay, I’ve got you.” Naomi pulled out her phone, nearly dropping it as rain slicked the screen. She hit 911 and put it on speaker. While the call rang, she kept one hand on his shoulder as if she could hold him in the world by touch alone. “Don’t close your eyes. Stay with me.”
A dispatcher answered, calm and clear. Naomi gave the nearest street, then the restaurant name, then corrected herself because she was behind the building, not in front of it. The dispatcher told her not to move him unless he was in immediate danger and asked whether he was breathing. Naomi bent close, felt uneven air against her cheek, and answered yes, though the truth was thinner than that. He was breathing the way a candle burned in a draft.
“What’s your name?” Naomi asked him. “Can you tell me?”
His lips moved. She lowered her ear.
“Ar…thur.”
“Arthur? Okay, Arthur. My name is Naomi Brooks. I’m right here, and help is coming.” She pushed wet curls back from her face and looked toward the mouth of the alley. No sirens yet. No one else. Only rain sliding down brick, carrying cigarette ash and bits of paper toward a clogged drain.
The man’s eyes opened for half a second. He looked at her, not like a rich man looking at a waitress, not like a white man looking at a Black girl in a dark alley, but like a human being trying to find one steady thing before he disappeared.
“My drink,” he whispered.
Naomi frowned. “Your drink?”
His face tightened. “Family.”
A colder fear moved through her. “Your family? You want me to call your family?”
His eyes shifted, and for one brief, awful second, the fear in them sharpened. Not confusion. Warning.
The dispatcher said an ambulance was three minutes away. Naomi leaned over him. “You hear that, Arthur? Three minutes. You can give me three minutes. My mama says stubborn people live longer because they’re too hardheaded to leave when they’re told, so be stubborn. Be real stubborn.”
A sound came from his throat. It might have been pain. It might have been the smallest attempt at a laugh. Naomi almost cried from relief.
“That’s right,” she said. “Stay mad if you have to. Stay awake.”
Then his body went slack.
“Arthur?” Naomi’s voice cracked. “No. No, sir. Not now.”
The dispatcher’s tone sharpened. Naomi checked his breathing, found it shallow, and pressed two fingers to his neck. For a terrifying second she felt only rain, panic, and her own pulse pounding in her fingertips. Then she found his, weak but there.
Sirens rose beyond the alley. Red and white light bounced against the brick walls. Paramedics rushed in with boots splashing through puddles, and Naomi shouted, “Over here!”
They took over fast. One asked if she had called it in. Another cut open Arthur’s shirt. Naomi backed away on shaking legs, her scraped palms open at her sides, unable to stop watching the man’s hand slip from beneath the blanket as they rolled him toward the ambulance. A paramedic looked over his shoulder.
“Miss, you found him? We may need your statement. You riding with us?
