"The Shy Bartender Sat on the Mafia Boss's Lap During a Police Search—His Promise Changed Everything

The sun was just beginning to rise over the East River when the Maybach pulled up to the curb outside my apartment building on Avenue B.

The street was bathed in a pale, pinkish-gold morning light. The rain had stopped, leaving the asphalt glistening like fresh glass. The curry smell from the third floor was gone, replaced by the crisp, cold air of an October morning.

I stepped out of the car.

I wasn't wearing the emerald dress anymore. I wore my dark denim jeans, my grey cashmere sweater, and my comfortable sneakers.

Julian stepped out behind me.

He didn't have his six armed guards with him. He didn't have his consigliere, his Maybach driver, or his tactical tablet. He stood on the dirty sidewalk of Avenue B wearing his charcoal wool overcoat, looking up at the faded red brick building with quiet, unhurried contemplation.

"It looks smaller than I expected," he said softly.

"It's a four-story walk-up with a broken intercom," I said, offering a faint, genuine smile—the first real smile I had felt in five days. "It's not a French chateau in Westchester."

"No," Julian agreed, turning to look at me. "It isn't."

We walked up the front steps together. The heavy oak front door was unlocked. We climbed the four flights of wooden stairs in silence, our footfalls echoing through the quiet building.

We reached apartment 4B.

I pulled my key from my pocket, inserted it into the double deadbolt, and turned the iron mechanism.

Click.

The door swung open.

The living room was exactly as I had left it. The small floor lamp was still on, casting a soft yellow glow over my faded velvet couch, my paperback novels, and the silver fountain pen still sitting on the coffee table where Julian had left it four nights ago.

I walked into the room, set my small duffel bag on the floor, and turned back to face him.

Julian stood in the doorway, his hands resting in his overcoat pockets, his high frame framing the dark corridor behind him.

"You're free, Elena," he said quietly. "Victor Moretti is in a federal holding facility in Manhattan. Thomas Kross is facing thirty years without parole. The threat is gone."

I looked at him. Really looked at him.

I thought about the man who had ordered three controlled bursts at Vespers to keep his identity hidden. I thought about the man who had carried me into this room, cleaned my wounds, destroyed his enemies, and held me on his lap in front of forty federal agents to keep me out of a prison cell.

"I don't think I want to be free the way I was before, Julian," I said softly.

Julian paused. His grey eyes flicked up to mine, dark and steady. "What do you want, Elena?"

I walked across the hardwood floor, stopping three inches from where he stood in my doorway. I reached out, my fingers taking hold of the dark wool lapels of his coat, pulling him gently across my threshold.

"I want to rebuild Vespers," I said, looking up into his eyes. "I want to call my parents every Sunday. And I want the man in the charcoal suit to come in every Tuesday night, sit in the corner booth, and order two glasses of twenty-year-old Japanese whisky."

Julian looked down at my hands on his coat. A slow, genuine warmth spread across his face—a smile that reached all the way into his slate-grey eyes, completely erasing the cold predator I had met four days ago.

"Two glasses?" he asked softly.