My Manager Fired Me For Saving A Bleeding Mafia Boss — He Didn’t Know I Earned The Syndicate’s Protection
Part 1
The brass bell above the diner door did not simply ring.
It violently smashed against the glass as the heavy oak door was kicked open.
The late-night chatter abruptly died.
The clinking of silverware stopped.
A man staggered into the diner.
He was tall and dressed in a bespoke charcoal gray suit.
The fabric was completely soaked with rain and something much darker.
His face was pale as parchment.
The injured man held his stomach tightly.
Blood oozed between his fingers.
It spilled onto the floor in thick and heavy droplets.
I recognized him instantly.
And by the collective gasp that sucked the air out of the room, so did everyone else.
It was Greg Russo.
He led the feared Russo crime syndicate without question.
People crossed the street when they saw his black SUV approaching.
The local news had been buzzing for weeks about a vicious turf war between the Russos and the rival Falcone family.
Tonight, it seemed the war had spilled right into my diner.
Greg took two agonizing steps forward.
He collapsed against a corner booth.
He slid down the cracked vinyl until he hit the floor with a heavy thud.
A smeared trail of crimson marked the edge of the booth.
Panic erupted inside the diner.
It was silent and cowardly.
A trucker at the counter threw a twenty-dollar bill on the floor.
He grabbed his jacket and bolted out the back exit.
Two college students abandoned their milkshakes.
They scrambled out the front door.
They avoided the bleeding mafia boss like he was radioactive.
Craig, my manager, let out a pathetic squeak.
My manager cowered behind the cash register.
With shaking hands, he secured the metal grate over the money.
He crouched on the floor trembling.
No one moved to help him.
Touching the bleeding man meant inviting the wrath of the shooters.
Greg coughed a wet rattling sound.
He rasped something softly in Sicilian.
He begged for help.
He expected silence.
He expected the cold embrace of death on a cheap linoleum floor.
Instead, he heard the heavy deliberate squeak of my rubber-soled nurse shoes.
I did not run away.
While Craig cowered and the rest of the world turned a blind eye, I dropped my coffee pot.
The glass shattered across the tiles.
I did not care.
I moved with a surprising grounded urgency.
I dropped heavily to my knees beside the bleeding boss.
I whispered a quick prayer in my grandmother’s native tongue.
My hands hovered over his ruined suit.
Greg opened his dark eyes.
He looked up at my round fleshy face.
I was a big woman, acutely aware of the space I took up in the narrow aisles.
Customers usually looked right through me.
They treated me like a soft, fat, invisible machine meant only to deliver pancakes.
But right now, I was the only thing standing between this man and the grave.
I asked him in flawless Sicilian if he could hear me.
The mafia boss blinked his eyes in complete surprise.
He warned me that Falcone’s men were coming.
I did not hesitate.
Society might have written me off as a slow and lazy woman.
They did not know the sheer physical strength I possessed.
I roared at Craig to get out from behind the counter and help me lift him.
Craig shrieked that we would be dead if they found us with him.
I spat at my cowardly manager in sheer disgust.
I told Greg this was going to hurt like hell.
I grabbed him by the lapels of his ruined thousand-dollar suit.
I planted my thick legs.
I used my low center of gravity and my substantial weight as leverage.
With a mighty heave, I yanked upward.
Greg let out a stifled roar of agony.
His boots scrambled for purchase.
Despite his frame of pure muscle, I hoisted him up.
I threw his heavy arm over my wide shoulders.
I wrapped my thick arm around his waist.
I pressed my soft side against his bleeding ribs to act as a human crutch.
I commanded him to walk.
Together we stumbled toward the back hallway.
The screech of tires echoed from the parking lot outside.
The heavy steel door of the walk-in freezer slammed shut behind us.
It cut off the ambient noise of the diner.
It plunged us into near freezing darkness.
A single flickering fluorescent bulb illuminated the frost.
I eased Greg down onto a stack of cardboard boxes.
He groaned as his head lolled back against the frost-covered aluminum wall.
I grabbed a stack of clean heavy-duty bar towels.
I pressed them hard against the gunshot wound in his abdomen.
Greg hissed in pain.
His fingers gripped my thick wrist with surprising strength.
He told me I spoke like his mother.
I told him my grandmother taught me not to walk away when someone is bleeding out.
He watched me move.
I was out of breath.
My large chest heaved, but I did not look panicked.
I was just incredibly angry.
I grabbed a roll of industrial duct tape from a utility shelf.
Suddenly the muffled sound of the diner’s front door being kicked open echoed through the heavy walls.
Greg went entirely still.
I froze the duct tape in my hand.
We could hear heavy footsteps out in the dining area.
Loud and aggressive voices echoed through the diner.
It was Dan, one of the Falcone family’s most notorious hitmen.
I could hear Craig crying in the background.
Craig swore he did not know where the bleeding man went.
Dan barked that he was lying because the blood trail stopped at the hallway.
Inside the freezer, Greg reached into his shoulder holster.
His movements were agonizingly slow.
He retrieved a dark firearm from his holster.
His hands were shaking so violently from blood loss and the freezing temperature that he nearly dropped it.
I gently took the gun from his trembling hands.
Greg whispered weakly that I could not even hold it.
I slipped the heavy firearm into the deep wide pocket of my pink uniform apron.
I told him I was going out there.
Greg commanded me to stop.
He said they would kill me because I was just a woman.
I looked down at him with a bitter smile.
I told him that men like that do not see me as a threat.
They do not see me as a woman at all.
I am just a fat fixture in a diner.
I am completely invisible.
Before Greg could stop me, I slipped out into the back hallway.
I pulled the heavy steel door completely shut behind me.
I took a deep breath.
I instantly altered my posture.
I let my shoulders slump.
I widened my eyes to look terrified and stupid.
I waddled out into the main dining area holding a dirty mop.
Dan and a massive bruiser named Kevin had Craig pinned against the pie display case.
Dan held a snub-nosed revolver pressed under Craig’s chin.
I shrieked and dropped the mop with a loud clatter.
The two hitmen spun around and aimed their weapons at me.
Throwing my hands up in the air, I let out a sharp cry.
My thick arms trembled flawlessly in the dim light.
Tears immediately filled my eyes as I cowered before them.
Making myself look as pathetic and helpless as possible came naturally in this uniform.
A desperate plea for them not to shoot the night waitress spilled from my lips.
Dan looked me up and down.
His lip curled in obvious disgust.
He took in my stained pink uniform and my heavy frame.
Just as I predicted, his eyes immediately registered me as worthless.
Kevin sneered and lowered his gun slightly.
He demanded to know where the guy in the suit went.
I stuttered and pointed a chubby finger toward the back exit door that led to the alley.
I told them he went right out the emergency exit into the alley.
I begged them to just take the money in the register and not hurt me.
Craig stared at me utterly bewildered.
Dan shoved Craig away in disgust.
He ordered Kevin to check the alleyway.
Kevin sneered at me one last time.
He told me to clean up the mess before they sprinted down the hallway.
They blew past the walk-in freezer.
They kicked open the heavy emergency exit.
They charged out into the rainy alley.
The moment they disappeared outside, my terrified facade completely vanished.
My face hardened into unforgiving stone.
I gripped the heavy mop handle like a spear, praying they wouldn’t realize the blood trail led right to the freezer.
