Chapter 1 - The Lullaby in the Dark
The most dangerous man in New York had ignored gunshots without blinking, buried friends without crying, and once finished dinner while three armed men waited outside to kill him. But six whispered words from a frightened waitress made Landon Moretti forget how to breathe.
It happened on a rain-soaked Tuesday night in Manhattan.
One moment, Landon was standing beside a private dining room while his security team searched for his missing four-year-old nephew. The next, he heard a young woman whisper in Italian from behind a velvet curtain.
“Le stelle vegliano mentre il sole dorme.”
The stars watch over you while the sun sleeps.
Landon stopped so suddenly that the man behind him nearly walked into his back. Nobody should have known those words. Nobody alive, anyway.
He pulled the curtain aside. A waitress was kneeling on the polished floor beside a small boy curled between a service cart and the wall. Leo Moretti had been missing for seven minutes—a seven-minute stretch that had felt longer to Landon than the two years since Leo's father had been buried.
The child’s cheeks were wet with tears. The waitress kept several feet between them, making no attempt to grab him. She simply sat on her heels.
“That’s it,” she whispered in Italian. “You don’t have to come out until you’re ready.”
Leo sniffed. “You know Papa’s song?”
The waitress’s face changed. Only for a second, but Landon saw it: fear, not confusion. Recognition. Then she forced a small smile. “I know a little song like it.”
Leo crawled toward her. The boy who screamed when strangers touched him placed one tiny hand inside hers.
Landon felt something cold slide down his spine. Behind him, Dominic Hale, his head of security, murmured, “Boss?”
Landon raised one hand. Silence.
The waitress looked up. She was perhaps twenty-eight, with dark brown hair pinned carelessly behind her neck and gray-blue eyes that seemed too alert for someone wearing a cheap black restaurant apron. Her name tag said SARA.
Landon had spent years surviving because he noticed details other men dismissed. The waitress’s shoes were inexpensive, but her posture was not. Her hands trembled, but when a waiter dropped a tray behind her, she didn’t flinch toward the noise. She glanced toward the nearest exit—instinctively, professionally. And she had just sung a lullaby composed by Landon’s dead brother.
“Where did you learn that?” Landon asked.
The waitress went still. Leo immediately tightened his fingers around hers.
Landon lowered his voice. “The song.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You spoke Sicilian Italian to him.”
“I studied abroad.”
“Where?”
“Rome.”
Landon almost smiled. Almost. “The words you used aren’t Roman.”
Her face lost color. “They’re from a fishing village outside Cefalù.”
The restaurant seemed to disappear around them. The murmuring customers, the clinking glasses, the rain striking the tall windows—all of it faded.
“My brother wrote those words,” Landon said. “For his son.”
The woman slowly stood. Leo remained beside her.
“Santino never recorded the song. He never wrote it down. And he died before Leo was old enough to remember most of it.”
She swallowed hard. “I must have heard something similar.”
“No.” Landon took one step toward her. She took one step backward. His suspicions sharpened immediately. “What’s your last name, Sara?”
“Miller.”
“Where are you from?”
“Ohio.”
“Where in Ohio?”
“Outside Cleveland.”
The answer came too quickly. Landon looked at Dominic. “Take Leo.”
“No!” Leo clung to the waitress.
She crouched immediately. “Hey. Look at me.”
Leo’s lower lip trembled.
“I have to go back to work,” she whispered.
“Don’t,” Leo pleaded.
The single word broke something inside her. Landon saw it—for the first time, her fear disappeared beneath something stronger: grief. She brushed Leo’s hair from his forehead. “The stars are still there even when you can’t see them, okay?”
Leo nodded reluctantly. Then she stood. “I need to get back to my tables.”
Landon stepped aside. That surprised Dominic. It surprised the waitress more. She hurried through the swinging kitchen doors.
Landon waited three seconds. Then he said, “Find her.”
Dominic glanced at him. “She works here.”
“Not her shift schedule.” Landon’s eyes remained on the kitchen doors. “Find out who she really is.”
Twenty minutes later, Sara Miller left through the employees’ entrance without collecting her tips. By the time Dominic reached the alley, she was gone. Landon stared at the empty rain-darkened street.
May you like
Then his phone rang. His private investigator spoke rapidly. Landon said nothing for nearly a minute.
Finally, he asked, “You’re sure?”
