Shy Waitress Greeted Mafia Boss’s Sicilian Dad—Her Sicilian Dialect Greeting Had Every Guest Frozen

“What bomb?” Salvatore asked.

He limped forward, leaning on a pitchfork for support.

“The car?”

Vinnie grinned, his teeth stained red.

“The armored sedan. You think I’d let you escape? I rigged the ignition. You turn the key, you all go boom.”

Lorenzo’s face went pale. That was exactly where they were heading.

If Louisa hadn’t released the horse, if they had just run for the car…

“Where are the others?” Lorenzo pressed the gun to Vinnie’s forehead.

“Where is the extraction team?”

“They’re waiting at the airfield,” Vinnie coughed.

“The Russians… they have a pilot ready to fly the girl to Moscow. They don’t just want the accounts, Lorenzo. They want the list.”

“The list?” Louisa asked.

“The compromat,” Salvatore said.

His voice was grim.

“The blackmail files my father kept on half the governments in Europe. That is what lies in the vault. That is what your voice protects, Louisa. If the Russians get that, they control NATO.”

Vinnie laughed, a wet gurgling sound.

“She’s not a waitress. She’s a nuclear weapon. And you can’t protect her, Lorenzo. The Genovese are coming. They’ll be here in five minutes.”

Lorenzo looked at Vinnie with cold detachment.

“You’re right. I can’t protect her here.”

“So let’s make a deal,” Vinnie begged.

“I can get you out. I know the—”

Bang! Lorenzo fired.

Vinnie slumped back into the hay, silence reclaiming the barn.

A New Resolve

Lorenzo didn’t look away. He holstered his weapon and turned to Louisa.

His eyes were dark, filled with a mixture of rage and adrenaline. He walked over to her.

Louisa was shaking again, the reality of what she had almost done crashing down on her. She had shot at a man.

She had watched a man die.

“Louisa,” Lorenzo said softly.

He reached out, his hands cupping her face. He forced her to look at him.

“You saved us,” he said.

He spoke with intense sincerity.

“That horse… that was brilliant.”

“I missed,” Louisa whispered.

Tears were spilling over.

“I tried to shoot him and I missed.”

“You bought me time,” Lorenzo said.

“That is all that matters.”

He leaned his forehead against hers. For a moment, amidst the dead bodies and the smell of gunpowder, the world narrowed down to just the two of them.

Louisa felt his breath on her skin, ragged and hot. She felt the frantic beat of his heart against her chest.

“We have to go,” Salvatore interrupted gently.

“He said five minutes. We have two left.”

Lorenzo pulled back, his eyes searching Louisa’s one last time.

“The sedan is rigged. We take the truck. The old farm truck in the back. It has no electronics; Vinnie wouldn’t have bothered with it.”

“Where do we go?” Louisa asked.

She wiped her tears.

“If the airfield is compromised and the house is gone?”

Lorenzo looked toward the heavy wooden doors of the barn. Beyond them lay the dark forest and, beyond that, the road.

“We go to the only place they won’t look,” Lorenzo said.

“We go to Little Italy, to the old neighborhood, to the basement of Veno and Verita.”

Louisa’s eyes widened.

“Back to the restaurant?”

“It’s the last place they’ll expect us to be,” Lorenzo said.

“And it’s the only place where I can make the call to the one man who hates the Russians more than we do.”

“Who?” Salvatore asked.

“The Capo of the Irish mob,” Lorenzo said grimly.

“We’re going to start a war, Father, and we’re going to win it.”

Lorenzo grabbed Louisa’s hand.

“Ready?”

Louisa looked at her hand in his. It was bloody, dirty, and trembling, but his grip was iron.

“Ready,” she said.

And as they ran toward the rusted farm truck, Louisa Russo left the last of her fear in the dust. The shy waitress was gone.

The mafia princess had arrived.