Chapter 7 - Flour on the Floor
Maya screamed.
Julian pulled her behind the steel prep table as a second bullet tore through the kitchen door.
Derek fired toward the front room.
"Back exit!"
Maya crawled across flour-dusted tile. Julian stayed between her and the doorway, returning two shots.
Nico groaned near the ovens.
"I'm hit!"
"Where?" Julian shouted.
"Leg!"
Derek dragged him by the coat while Maya pushed open the alley door.
Cold morning air slammed into them.
A black SUV waited at the curb with its engine running.
"Not ours," Derek said.
The driver's window lowered.
Maya saw the gray cap.
"That's him!"
The bakery man raised a gun.
Julian shoved Maya down.
Bullets punched brick above them.
Derek fired. The SUV fishtailed into traffic and vanished.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then Nico laughed weakly from the ground. "Hell of a breakfast."
Blood soaked his pants below the knee.
Julian knelt. "You'll live."
"You sound disappointed."
"I'm thinking about it."
Sirens approached.
They moved fast.
Twenty minutes later they were inside a private medical office controlled by one of Julian's legitimate companies. A doctor removed the bullet from Nico's calf while Maya sat in the hall clutching the brass key.
Julian joined her.
"You okay?"
"No."
"Good answer."
She looked at him. "Do people shoot at you this often?"
"Not lately."
"I miss yesterday."
"You were working two jobs and hiding eighty-six thousand dollars in debt."
"Still quieter."
He almost smiled.
Then Maya's expression hardened.
"You still haven't told me everything about my father."
"I know."
"If we're walking into bullets together, I need the rest."
Julian sat beside her.
"Rafael came to me one week before he died."
Maya turned slowly.
"You said you barely knew him."
"I lied."
She stood.
"Sit down."
"Don't tell me to sit down."
"He came to me because he thought I could stop my father. I told him I couldn't."
"So he asked you for help and you sent him away?"
"Yes."
The word was ugly because it was true.
Maya's eyes filled, but she refused to cry.
"Why?"
"Because I was a coward."
Julian looked straight at her.
"I told myself I was protecting my mother, my sister, everyone around me. Maybe I was. But your father walked out of my office alone, and three days later he was dead."
Maya's voice cracked. "You could have saved him."
"Maybe."
"You don't get to say maybe."
"You're right."
She slapped the brass key against his chest.
"Then help me finish what he started. Not because you care about me. Not because you feel guilty. Because you owe him."
Julian closed his hand around the key.
"I do."
Derek came down the hall holding a tablet.
"Found something on the bakery cameras."
He showed them footage from ten minutes before the shooting.
A side door opened.
Someone inside the bakery had unlocked it.
Maya leaned closer.
Only a hand appeared in frame.
A man's hand wearing a silver ring stamped with a small black C.
Julian's face changed.
Maya noticed.
"You know that ring."
May you like
He looked toward the room where Nico was being treated.
"Every male member of my family got one when we turned eighteen."
