THE DEVIL’S BARGAIN

Eighty-seven thousand, four hundred and thirty-two dollars.

The bill that I had incurred in the hospital. The price of my mother's final chemotherapy.

"Miss Rossi?" The billing clerk's voice cut through my frantic brain. "We need to discuss payment terms. Your mother has another treatment scheduled for Friday, but without—"

"I'll have the money." I flat-out lied. I had no idea where I was going to come up with that kind of money. I thumbed through the cash in my mind, my mind racing with what to do, but it came up blank. "Give me until Thursday."

The clerk's pitiful smile was worse than pure cruelty. "Miss, I understand your situation is not simple, but the hospital has procedures. Perhaps we can consider other treatment facilities—"

"No." The word had escaped harsher than I intended. I tried to make my voice gentler. "Mercy General has the state's best oncology department. My mother is not leaving there. She's all I have left.".

Twenty minutes on, I was in the hospital car park, looking wildly around from left to right. I had no clue where I went from here. Those guys I saw wiped my brain out. I had three jobs: morning shift at the diner, afternoons at the dry cleaner, and nights cleaning offices. Ninety hours a week, and that wasn't even enough.

My phone buzzed. A message from my mom: How was the appointment, sweetheart? The new treatment is working. I can feel it.

My hand trembled as I typed in response: Everything's fine, Mom. Rest now. I love you.

Another lie. All the pretence that I was putting on in order not to distress my mother was choking me.

I drove to the city underworld to perform my night cleaning duties. The part of the city that belonged to the Mafia dons, the part of Italy that stirred only at nighttime.

The Palazzo Casino was the tallest tower, its glass windows sparkled like diamonds in the night sky.

I drove my crumpled Honda alongside the employee entrance and looked into the rearview mirror to catch a glimpse of my appearance. Black circles under my green eyes, my alabaster-white face. I appeared older than twenty-five, since I was carrying the burden of my mother's illness and our dwindling finances.

"Another night," I told myself, grabbing my cleaning equipment in the trunk. "Just make it through another night."

I navigated through the labyrinth of corridors and back roads that I was used to traversing each evening. This part of the casino was deserted, nobody about. I liked it, the peace. I have been employed there for six months in the early morning when the casino was nearly empty except for the players who didn't want to leave and some nocturnal employees needed to maintain the casino running.

I started on the third floor, in the offices of administration, and moved up room by room. I vacuumed, dusted, emptied the trash and disinfected the surfaces. The routine was numbing, something I required after the day I had endured.

It was near 3 AM when I reached the executive level. This floor was not the same. It was less noisy and more upscale. I had only been up here a few times. The elevator beeped softly as I pushed my cart down the hall to the corner office. Mr. Torrino, the casino manager, had specifically requested that I make the executive level personally. "Discretion is of the highest importance," he'd passionately told me. I hadn't understood then. I understood now.

I froze in the doorway to the conference room, my grip still tight on the handle of my cleaning cart. A formally dressed man was on his knees on a piece of plastic sheeting, his body wracked and his face pale with terror. Blood was spreading under him, the blood soaking into the plastic sheeting.

Hovering above him stood another man. Tall, shoulder width, with dark hair swept back from under the overhead lights. He had a gun to the head of the kneeling man. His face was turned away from me, but there was something in the way he was standing that gave off a cold, calculating brutality and made my blood run cold.

"You stole from my family, Marco." The voice was as cold as frostbite. "Believed I'd never find out about it?"

"Please, Mr. Marchetti, let me explain—"

"No." The single word was absolute. "You can't."

The blast inside the room was deafening. My own scream was stuck in my throat as the kneeling form fell forward, his life snuffed out in an instant.

I should run. All of my survival instincts were telling me to back up quietly, to pretend that I didn't see this, to disappear into the maze of corridors and never come back again.

Instead, my cleaning cart chose to turn against me at that time.

The wheel got stuck on the door frame and the entire cart collapsed onto the floor. The thud of the supplies struck the marble and echoed down the hall like gunfire.

The gunman spun around.

I found myself staring into the gray-blue eyes of Kaius Marchetti, the notorious mafia don. I only know him from the television and in rumors. He governed the underworld with an iron fist, and sometimes he was the most wanted man in the city. What I did not expect was for him to look even more devastating in person. He had a scar on his face that ran from his right temple to his jaw. For a moment we looked at each other across the room. My hands were trembling and fear had me frozen in place. He just looked at me with empty eyes and an eyebrow raised. He was furious. I was not where I was supposed to be, hadn't witnessed this.

Then Kaius Marchetti rose to his feet and held the gun against my chest.