Chapter 1 - THE GIRL WHO WALKED IN AFTER CLOSING
Christmas Eve was nearly over when seven-year-old Lily Mercer slipped into Bell & Rowan, a locked Manhattan restaurant where Emily Hart was cleaning tables alone.
At thirty-something, Emily had become skilled at pretending solitude did not bother her. She had volunteered to close so her manager could spend Christmas with his grandchildren. She told herself she preferred the quiet.
Lily saw through it immediately.
Wearing a red wool coat and cream knit hat, the little girl looked around the empty dining room and asked Emily a question no adult had dared ask in years.
“Who’s waiting for you at home?”
Nobody.
Emily tried humor. Lily refused to accept it.
Outside stood Lily’s father, Julian Mercer, a man whose name was known throughout New York. Publicly, the Mercer family owned shipping companies, hotels, construction firms, nightclubs, and real estate.
Privately, everyone knew there was another side to the Mercer empire.
Julian was one of New York’s most feared Mafia bosses.
When Julian entered the restaurant to retrieve his daughter, Emily expected danger.
Instead, she found a tired widower dealing with an extraordinarily determined little girl.
Lily learned Emily had no family waiting, no Christmas tree, no presents, no turkey, and only half a cheesecake in her apartment.
Horrified, she invited Emily home.
Julian refused.
Lily reminded him that their house had twelve bedrooms and eleven empty ones. She quoted her grandmother, who said Christmas meant making room at the table.
Julian tried explaining that people could not simply invite strangers into their homes because they felt sorry for them.
Lily quietly corrected him.
“I don’t feel sorry for her. I like her.”
For the first time, Emily saw something almost gentle in Julian Mercer.
Then Lily said the one thing that erased it.
“Mom would invite her.”
The restaurant fell silent.
Julian’s wife was dead.
Whatever had happened to her had left a wound even seven-year-old Lily knew she had touched.
Julian crouched in front of his daughter, but Lily did not retreat.
She looked directly into her father’s eyes.
“Wouldn’t she?”
May you like
And suddenly Emily understood that the most dangerous thing inside Bell & Rowan that Christmas Eve was not the Mafia boss standing ten feet away.
It was the memory of the woman he had loved.
