Chapter 6: The Threat That Changed Everything
Lorenzo set the phone face-down on the table.
"Reyes," he said.
Reyes was already moving toward the door, phone to his ear.
Marcus looked between them.
"What was that?"
"Nothing that concerns you," Lorenzo said.
He looked at Evelyn.
"We need to move you."
"I heard what it said," Evelyn told him.
"I'm not going to pretend I didn't."
"I know."
"Who took that photo?"
"Someone inside The Obsidian tonight.
One of the waitstaff, a guest, or someone Celeste had positioned in the room before the dinner." Lorenzo stood.
"It means she knew you passed the napkin.
Or she suspects it."
"How?
She was watching the table."
"Celeste watches everything." He said it without admiration.
"It's the one thing she's genuinely good at."
Evelyn thought about the mirrored wall.
The way Celeste's eyes had tracked the room.
She'd been so focused on Celeste watching the exits that she hadn't considered Celeste was also watching her.
"She doesn't know my name," Evelyn said.
"She didn't," Lorenzo said.
"That message tells me she's working on it."
Reyes came back in.
"Car's ready.
I've got two men on the street."
Lorenzo looked at Marcus.
"You're coming with us.
The briefcase stays in my custody."
Marcus didn't argue.
Whatever courage had brought him to this building had apparently been fully spent.
They moved fast — elevator, lobby, the cold air of the street.
Evelyn got into the second car with Reyes.
Lorenzo took the briefcase and got into the first.
The city moved past the windows.
Evelyn watched it and tried to think clearly.
Celeste had tried to have Lorenzo kjlled.
She'd stolen from him for eight months.
She'd been present, at nineteen, on a phone call ordering a man's de@th.
And now, from wherever she was hiding, she was sending photographs and threats.
She wasn't panicking.
She was still operating.
That was the part that frightened Evelyn most.
Reyes glanced at her from the front seat.
"You doing all right?"
"Define all right."
"Breathing.
Thinking.
Not frozen."
"Then yes," Evelyn said.
"Barely."
"That's enough for tonight." He paused.
"For what it's worth — what you did at the restaurant.
Most people wouldn't have."
"Most people didn't know what they were looking at."
"Maybe," Reyes said.
"But you did, and you still wrote the napkin."
Evelyn looked out the window.
A bridge.
The river below it, black and moving.
"My father tried to do the right thing and it got him kjlled.
I spent eighteen years thinking that meant you shouldn't try." She paused.
"Turns out I was wrong about that."
The car stopped in front of a building she didn't recognize — narrow, brick, no signage.
Lorenzo was already on the sidewalk, briefcase in hand, talking to a woman Evelyn hadn't seen before.
Tall, early forties, dark coat.
She had the posture of someone who had never been surprised by anything and intended to keep it that way.
Evelyn got out.
"This is Carver," Lorenzo said.
"My attorney."
Carver looked at Evelyn with sharp, assessing eyes.
"You're the witness."
"I'm the waitress," Evelyn said.
"Same thing tonight." Carver held out her hand.
"I need your account of what you saw on Celeste Vane's phone — exact wording, exact time, everything.
Can you give me that?"
"Yes."
"Good." Carver glanced at Lorenzo.
"I've already contacted the U.S.
Attorney's office.
Given the financial crimes and the interstate elements, this goes federal.
They want to move quickly before Celeste crosses a border." She looked back at Evelyn.
"Your testimony is the thread that connects the phone notification to the operation tonight.
Without it, the financial crimes are serious but the attempted kjlling is harder to prove.
With it, Celeste Vane is looking at a coordinated conspiracy charge."
"And Richard Vane?" Evelyn said.
Carver's eyes were steady.
"The recording in that briefcase, if it authenticates the way Marcus claims, puts Richard Vane in direct contact with the man who was hired to make your father disappear.
That's a federal case that's been waiting six years for evidence." She paused.
"I want you to understand what you're stepping into.
Testifying against the Vane family is not a small thing."
"I know," Evelyn said.
"They have resources.
They have lawyers.
They will come at your credibility, your history, your father's history.
They will try to make you look unreliable."
"I'm a waitress from Cicero," Evelyn said.
"They can try."
Something moved in Carver's expression.
Not quite a smile.
Close to respect.
"All right," Carver said.
"Let's get started."
They went inside.
The building was warm, quiet, lined with files.
Carver set up at a table with a recorder and a legal pad.
Lorenzo sat across the room, out of the way, the briefcase at his feet.
Evelyn sat down across from Carver and told her everything.
The notification.
The exact words.
The time.
Celeste's thumb tapping twice on the clutch.
The way Lorenzo's voice had changed when he said *he did* — that slight closing-off, the moment he'd read the napkin and understood.
She talked for forty minutes.
Carver wrote and recorded and asked precise, quiet questions.
When it was done, Carver looked at her notes.
"This is solid," she said.
"This is very solid."
Evelyn's phone — her own phone, which she'd somehow kept through all of it — buzzed on the table.
Unknown number.
She almost ignored it.
She picked it up.
The message was four words.
May you like
*Smart girl.
Last warning.*
