Chapter 2 - The Laundromat Proposal
By nine o'clock the next morning, I was sitting on a cold plastic chair at a laundromat on Western Avenue, watching my laundry spin behind a glass door. I was exhausted, my ankles were swollen, and the adrenaline from the Moretti estate had finally crashed into a deep bone weariness.
My phone rang. It was Denise.
"Claire, what did you do?" she demanded without saying hello. "Lorenzo Moretti’s personal assistant called our office twenty minutes ago. They paid off our entire event invoice, left a twenty-thousand-dollar tip, and requested your exclusive services as a private family aid."
"I told you I'm not going back there," I said, rubbing my temples. "That family is dangerous, Denise."
"They're offering five thousand dollars a week just for you to sit with his grandmother for three hours a day!"
"No."
"Claire—"
"I said no." I hung up the phone and dropped it into my coat pocket.
Ten minutes later, the front door of the laundromat opened, sending a rush of cold November air through the room. The three elderly women folding clothes near the window suddenly stopped talking.
Lorenzo Moretti walked in.
He looked completely out of place against the faded linoleum and humming washing machines. He wore a dark charcoal wool coat over a crisp white shirt, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. Two massive men in suits stood outside on the pavement beside a black Escalade.
I didn't stand up. I just kept watching my socks tumble in dryer number four.
"You're hard to reach," Lorenzo said, stopping a few feet from my plastic chair.
"I'm off the clock."
"I sent a formal contract to your employer an hour ago."
"I told her to decline it."
"I noticed," he said quietly. "That's why I came here."
"Look, Mr. Moretti," I turned to look at him, keeping my hands folded over my lap. "I'm a caterer. I translate old recipes for my fun, and I learned Calabrian because the elderly couple who lived next door to me growing up raised me like their own daughter. I am not a mob interpreter, I am not a detective, and I don't want any part of your family feud."
Lorenzo didn't get angry. He simply reached inside his coat pocket, pulled out a glossy eight-by-ten photograph, and laid it gently on the folding table between us.
It was a clear, high-resolution picture of me leaving my apartment building at seven this morning. But what made my blood run cold was the thick red marker circle drawn around my face—and the four words scrawled across the bottom:
SHE SHOULD STOP LISTENING.
My breath hitched. "Who took this?"
"My uncle Vittorio’s men," Lorenzo answered flatly. "Or someone working for the people who burned my father's warehouse fourteen years ago. They watched you leave the estate last night. They know you understand what my grandmother said."
"I haven't told anyone!"
"It doesn't matter to them, Claire," Lorenzo leaned down, placing both hands on the edge of the table, bringing his face level with mine. Up close, I could see the dark circles under his eyes and the absolute, unrelenting focus in his stare. "You spoke the truth in a room full of snakes. In my world, knowing a secret makes you just as dangerous as the person who committed the crime."
I swallowed down the knot of panic in my throat. "So what are you saying?"
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"I'm saying you're not a caterer anymore," Lorenzo said softly. "You're a witness. And if you stay in this apartment alone, you'll be dead by the weekend."
Before I could reply, the glass front window of the laundromat blew inward with a deafening CRACK.
