My Bully Boss Suddenly Gave Me A Raise — Then I Found Out Who Was Threatening Him

Part 1

The freezing rain sliced to my bones as I lugged a trash bag out the back door of the diner.

I was twenty-six, wore a size twenty-two, and was used to being profoundly invisible.

Tonight, my swollen feet throbbed, and I just wanted to toss the garbage and collapse into bed.

As I hoisted the bag into the rusted dumpster, a faint sound stopped me.

I grabbed my phone, turned on the flashlight, and stepped closer to the shadows against the brick wall.

Huddled against the wet, freezing brick was an old man shivering violently.

His cashmere coat was stained with alley mud, but underneath I could see a silk tie.

I gasped and dropped heavily onto the wet asphalt beside him.

He looked up, his skin a terrifying shade of pale gray, whispering that he didn’t know where his car was.

Panic rose in my chest as I draped my bright yellow rain slicker over his shivering shoulders.

He stammered that his name was Salvatore, and I knew calling an ambulance would take too long in this weather.

I wrapped my thick arms around his waist, hauling him up to practically carry him to my idling car.

He kept clutching his chest in pain, begging me not to take him to a hospital because bad men would find him.

The sheer panic in his voice made me hesitate, so I drove the five minutes to my tiny apartment instead.

I hauled him up two flights of stairs, laid him on my worn-out sofa, and dressed him in my oversized sweatpants.

I found an empty plastic pill bottle labeled with his name and a potent heart medication in his ruined jacket.

Checking my bank app, I saw I only had forty-two dollars to last me until Friday.

I drove to the twenty-four-hour pharmacy and begged the pharmacist until he gave me an emergency blister pack for thirty-eight dollars.

I placed a pill under Salvatore’s tongue, and within thirty minutes, his breathing finally evened out.

The nightmare began before the sun even came up.

I awoke with a violent start as my front door was kicked off its hinges with a deafening bang.

I screamed and scrambled backward until my wide back hit the wall.

Four massive men in dark suits swarmed into my tiny apartment, gripping handguns with silencers.

I pulled a throw pillow over my chest, acutely aware of my large thighs exposed in my threadbare pajamas.

Then a fifth man walked through the ruined doorway, and the air in the room plummeted ten degrees.

He was exceptionally tall, wearing a custom charcoal suit, with icy brown eyes completely devoid of mercy.

He surveyed my cramped apartment with a look of utter disgust, sweeping his gaze over my trembling, heavy frame.

He demanded to know where the old man was, his voice smooth and laced with a terrifying calm.

He grabbed a fistful of my messy hair and jerked my head back, threatening to paint my cheap wallpaper with my brains.

A raspy shout cut through the room like a whip, and the man holding me froze.

Sitting up on the floral sofa, tangled in my cheap fleece blankets, was Salvatore.

The terrifying intruder breathed the word ‘Father’ in frantic relief and rushed to his knees.

Salvatore ignored his son entirely, swinging his arm with surprising speed and slapping him hard across the face.

He roared that his son had laid hands on the woman who saved his life.

Vincent looked stunned, a red handprint blossoming on his cheek as Salvatore explained how I had spent my last dollars on his emergency medication.

Vincent slowly stood up and turned to face me, the disgust replaced by an intense, piercing calculation.

He pulled out a thick platinum money clip, peeled off five thousand dollars, and tossed it onto my coffee table.

He coldly told me it was for the pills and the door before his men gently helped Salvatore to his feet.

Before Vincent stepped through the doorway, he promised to kill me if I breathed a word of this to anyone.

For a week, I tried to convince myself it was all a terrible fever dream.

I hired a handyman to install three heavy deadbolts, hiding the blood money in a shoebox.

But on Tuesday night, my mean-spirited boss practically sprinted to hold the diner door open for me.

He stammered, pale and sweating, telling me he had authorized a raise and moved me to day shifts.

The realization hit me like a physical blow; Vincent hadn’t just walked out of my life, he was watching me.

By Friday, my anxiety was eating me alive as I walked to my car after my shift.

Tyler, a local gangbanger, stepped out from an alley with a switchblade and demanded my purse.

Driven by a surge of adrenaline, I yanked my purse back with all my weight, shoving him away.

He snarled and lunged at me, but a massive hand shot out of the darkness, grabbing Tyler by the throat.

A giant of a man squeezed until Tyler dropped the knife, before tossing him into the garbage like a broken toy.

I was paralyzed with shock, sliding down the side of a parked car.

A sleek black Maybach pulled up to the curb directly in front of me, and the rear door swung open.

Vincent sat bathed in the soft glow of the plush interior, his icy brown eyes locking onto my trembling form.

He stepped out of the car, towering over me, and offered his immaculate hand.

He said his father refused to eat unless I had dinner with them, and since his father’s health was the only thing he cared about, I was coming with him.

I stared at his hand, telling him I was a disgusting mess in my greasy uniform and couldn’t go to a mafia mansion.

He stepped closer, gripped my chin firmly, and forced me to look into his terrifying eyes.

He whispered that the men in his world respected power, and there was nothing disgusting about a woman who fought back and saved a mafia boss.

My invisible life officially ended the moment I placed my trembling hand in his and stepped into the darkness.