I Saved the Mafia Family by Being Cheap

At that moment, cigar smoke filled the Rinaldi family's meeting hall on the top floor of the Empire State Building. Every capo in the room looked like he'd just crawled out of a coffin.

Camilla turned to Helena with a victor's smile.

"Helena, have you thought it over?"

The hall was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Credit cutoff notices from 12 underground banks, three blood-contract kill orders, and collection letters for dirty money lay in a neat row in front of Helena.

Helena stood at the end of the long table, her face drained of color.

She didn't look at Camilla. Her gaze passed over everyone and landed on the leather couch in the corner.

I was sitting there holding three shriveled lemons.

The estate cook had been about to throw them out that morning. When I heard, I thought, No way. Squeeze out some juice, add water, and you've got free lemonade. So I slipped them into my pocket and brought them to headquarters.

Meeting her gaze, I sliced the lemons with a small knife and laid the slices one by one on the bone china plate in front of her.

Camilla tapped the mahogany table and shot me a contemptuous look.

"Helena, if you sign, I might even consider letting your useless sidekick go."

When I heard her mention me, I glanced up at the parchment contract on the table.

I couldn't read much of the Latin in it.

But I studied the Swiss bank wire receipt attached to it.

An encrypted Geneva seal marked the header, and the amount had so many zeros my eyes swam.

It read, "Initial payment for arms purchase: three billion dollars, wired in full on the signing date."

Three billion?

Before I could make sense of it, Helena covered the document with her hand and turned to reassure me.

"Chloe, this has nothing to do with you. Take my black card. Go have a steak at that new three-star Michelin restaurant on Fifth Avenue."

I immediately shook my head.

"That place costs $2,800 a person, plus a 20 percent service charge. Not worth it."

She paused, then burst out laughing, until her green eyes welled up.

"I decide what's worth it. I fight for territory so you'll have money to spend."

Nobody else understood what she meant by that, but I did.

When she first returned to the Rinaldi estate, people looked down on her. They said she had gunpowder under her fingernails, knew nothing about Bordeaux, and couldn't waltz.

She crouched on the fountain steps, holding me as she cried.

"Chloe, I don't have anything here."

I thought for a moment, then pulled out every cent I had to my name, a single five-dollar bill, and patted her blond head.

"It's okay. I do."

Helena cried her eyes out, snot and all.

She had no idea how much it hurt to hand over that five dollars.

So when she later gave me three billion dollars, my first reaction wasn't gratitude. I nearly had a heart attack.

What if it loses value? What if someone steals it?!

Camilla lost her patience.

"Helena, have you made up your mind? Midnight is the deadline. That's when the crime families put out their bounties. After that, you'll owe more than ten billion dollars in blood debt, and they'll kill you."

Helena ignored her. She turned to me and forced a smile that was painful to watch.

"Chloe, why don't you go back to the estate? Lock the bulletproof door. I had them save you some pasta in the wine cellar..."

Before she could finish, my encrypted satellite phone buzzed in my pocket.

I looked down.

It was a message from the Italian bookkeeper in our Sicilian arms group chat, polite but urgent.

"Ms. Novak, all the cargo ships have docked. When would be a good time for you to send the final payment we agreed on?"

I frowned at the message.

First, someone had thrown down a receipt claiming three billion dollars had been wired in full, all to force Helena to give up.

Now someone was asking me for the remaining balance.

One side said the money had been received in full. The other said it hadn't been paid at all.

This has to be a scam!

Does that mean my $10,000 just went down the drain?

Furious, I typed back two words.

"No money."