Chapter 3 - The South End Sovereignty
The light that woke Maeve Donovan was too bright, too clean, and smelled far too much of lavender oil to be her room on D Street.
She tried to sit up, but a sharp, burning needle of pain flared across her shoulder blades, forcing a low groan from her throat. Her right hand flew to her pocket, searching for the tip envelope she always kept hidden near her waist, but her fingers encountered only smooth, high-thread-count silk. She was wearing a pale gray nightgown that didn't belong to her, her hair washed and braided neatly over her right shoulder.
"Don't move," a voice said from the shadows near the fireplace.
Maeve’s head snapped around. Rafe Colazo sat in a wingback chair, his white shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a crystal tumbler containing three fingers of amber liquid resting on his knee. He looked older than he had in the restaurant—the dark circles beneath his eyes suggesting he had spent the night watching the door rather than sleeping.
"Where is Finn?" Maeve asked, her voice cracked and dry. She didn't ask who he was; she knew the face from every television screen in New England. He was the man the papers blamed for the warehouse fires in East Boston, the man her mother had warned her to avoid if she ever saw his cars near the docks.
"Your brother is currently in Room 412 of the medical center," Rafe said, taking a slow sip of his drink. "Dr. Aris is performing the initial valve mapping as we speak. The surgery is scheduled for Tuesday morning."
Maeve felt the air leave her lungs as if she had been struck by the baton a second time. "The hospital... they said no. They said the insurance—"
"The hospital says what I tell them to say, Miss Donovan," Rafe interrupted, standing up and walking toward the bed. He stopped two feet away, his shadow falling over her like a heavy blanket. "The bill has been cleared. The eviction notice on your apartment has been withdrawn, and the building has been purchased by a subsidiary of my shipping line. Your landlord has been... relocated to Rhode Island."
Maeve stared at him, her fingers digging into the silk sheet. "Why?"
"You took a steel bar for my sister," Rafe said, his gray eyes locking onto hers with a cold, geometric intensity. "In my world, a debt like that isn't paid with a thank-you note and a tip. You bled for the Colazo name. That means Boston knows your face now. The men who sent that server into The Salt Line know you're the reason their operation failed. If you walk out that door, you're a corpse by nightfall."
"I have to go to work," Maeve said, her voice rising in panic as she tried to swing her legs out from under the blanket. "The manager... Henderson said if I missed the weekend shift—"
"Henderson is dead," Rafe said smoothly.
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Maeve froze, her bare feet hovering an inch above the polished hardwood floor. "What?"
"He took fifty thousand dollars from the Lucchese family to leave the kitchen door unlocked," Rafe explained, his voice entirely casual, as if he were discussing the weather over the harbor. "My men found the cash in his spare tire. He won't be managing any more dining rooms, Miss Donovan. And you won't be waiting tables. From this day forward, you live here. In the North End. Under my roof."
