The first wineglass shattered at 8:07 p.m., the second waiter walked away crying seven minutes later, and by 8:22, our general manager was whispering, “We are finished.” At table nine sat Viktor Kovacs, a feared Eastern European mafia boss who had already dismissed three employees—and somehow, the only person willing to approach him was me, a broke waitress with forty-seven dollars in my checking account.

Viktor Kovacs stared at me as if I had just pulled a weapon instead of standing beside his table with a cocktail tray.

The phone remained pressed to his ear.

The man on the other end had stopped speaking.

For three long seconds, nobody moved.

Then Viktor answered in Hungarian.

“I’ll call you back.”

He placed the phone face down.

His gray eyes settled on mine.

“How much did you understand?”

I considered lying.

Then I remembered the forty-seven dollars in my checking account, the eviction notice in my purse, and the fact that lying badly to a man like Viktor Kovacs seemed like an excellent way to make all my financial problems irrelevant.

“Enough.”

His expression did not change.

“That is not an answer.”

“You’re waiting for an original authorization document. Someone delayed the courier. A council meeting starts in less than forty minutes, and a man named Pierce is planning to force a vote.”

Viktor leaned back slowly.

“And?”

I swallowed.

“Someone inside your organization betrayed you.”

The silence around table nine felt heavier.

Daniel Mercer watched from across the dining room.

I could practically hear him praying for me.

Viktor tapped one finger against the table.

“Where did you learn Hungarian?”

“My grandmother.”

“From Hungary?”

“She was born outside Budapest. She came to the United States in the eighties.”