Chapter 14
Rocco asked me to come to the club one week later.
The main floor was empty.
Chairs stacked.
Chandeliers dimmed.
The marble had been cleaned, but I still remembered every coin on it.
He stood near the center of the room with a folder in his hand.
Alina sat nearby, wrapped in a blue coat.
Serena stood beside her, not touching, but close.
That was progress.
Rocco handed me the folder.
“What is this?”
“Employment papers.”
“I already have a job.”
“No,” he said. “You had a position. I am offering you authority.”
I opened the folder.
Director of Guest Welfare and Staff Protection.
My mouth fell open.
“This is not a real job.”
“It is now.”
I looked at him.
“Rocco, I’m a waitress.”
“You are the only person in this building who protected dignity when there was no reward.”
My throat tightened.
“I don’t know how to run anything.”
“Good,” Alina said softly. “People who think they know everything ruined this place.”
Serena looked around the club.
“What will happen to it?”
Rocco took a breath.
“We change it or close it.”
I thought of the staff.
The ones who stayed silent.
The ones who were afraid.
The ones who needed work.
“Then change it,” I said.
Rocco’s eyes settled on me.
“With your help.”
I should have said no.
My life was already too full of hospital bills and danger.
But the room felt like a wound waiting to become something else.
So I nodded.
“Yes.”
That night, Dominic called from jail.
Rocco put him on speaker.
Dominic said, “You think a waitress can save the Vale name?”
May you like
I leaned toward the phone.
“No. But I can help bury what poisoned it.”
