The Mafia Boss’s Car Fell into the Abyss, and I Tried to Save Him—but His Guards Pulled Out Their Guns

That night, when a car plunged into the abyss on the mountain road, I was still collecting glasses in the restaurant and did not realize that in a few minutes I would catch death with my hands.

My name is Kara Fields. I was twenty-seven years old, and my life was measured by three things: endless bills, twelve-hour shifts, and the eight dollars I kept in my pocket at the end of every evening if the guests were in a generous mood.

“Bellini” was the most expensive restaurant in the city. People came here who were never interested in a waiter’s name. To them, we were only hands that poured wine, changed plates, and disappeared silently.

That evening, rain battered the windows furiously. It was ten o’clock when I carried a silver tray into a private room. Vanessa Moretti was sitting there—the beautiful woman whose husband’s surname was spoken quietly, almost with fear, in the city.

Dante Moretti.

The newspapers called him a successful businessman. Others knew that the most influential criminal network on the East Coast obeyed his word.

A strange man was sitting opposite Vanessa. They were as close as a husband and wife should not know. I stopped behind the curtain because I had left an empty glass on the table. That was when her lover’s voice entered the room.

“Everything is ready,” he said quietly.

Vanessa wrapped her finger around the neck of the wineglass.

“The brakes?”

“I cut them so no one will realize immediately. They will fail on the mountain road.”

My hands stopped.

The sound of the rain seemed to disappear in one second.

“Dante will leave in ten minutes,” the man continued. “And by midnight you will be a widow.”

Vanessa laughed softly.

“At last, everything will be mine.”

The tray nearly slipped from my fingers. I leaned against the wall and tried not to let anyone hear my breathing. I knew that people like that did not like accidental witnesses. I also knew that my salary was not worth a life.

But Dante Moretti was supposed to die in ten minutes.

I ran into the restaurant’s main hall. Dante was already standing by the door. He was wearing a dark coat, and he held car keys in his hand. Two guards were walking behind him.

“Mr. Moretti!” I shouted.

He turned.

“What happened?”

“Do not leave. Please, do not get into the car!”

One of the guards grabbed me by the arm.

“Step back.”

“They tampered with your brakes!” I told Dante. “Someone said they would fail on the mountain road!”

Something flashed in his eyes, but only for a moment.

“Who said it?”

Just then the restaurant manager ran toward me.

“Kara, return to the kitchen! Immediately!”

Dante looked at his watch. Then he looked toward the back door, where his black car was waiting in the rain.

“Miss,” he said calmly, “if this is a joke, you chose a bad time.”

“This is not a joke!”

He did not answer me. He got into the car and shut the door.

I ran into the street, pulled the keys from my apron pocket, and ran toward my own old car. Dante’s car was already moving away.

The tires slid on the wet asphalt. And only one thing kept turning in my head: if I was late by a few seconds, his death would happen before my eyes.

I got into the car and set off. Rain struck the windshield as if the whole city were trying to stop me. First I called emergency services, then I dialed Dante’s number from the business card I had found in the restaurant.

No one answered.

The mountain road had already begun. His rear lights were visible ahead. I flashed my headlights, pressed the horn, and shouted out the window, although he could not hear anything.

Then Dante’s brake lights came on.

Once.

Twice.

The third time they did not come on.

The black car entered the bend at excessive speed. It hit the metal railing and disappeared into the darkness.

I abandoned the car in the middle of the road and ran on foot. Below, among the trees, his car was hanging from one barely surviving branch. Its door was crushed, and Dante was sitting inside, half-conscious.

!!! Sora mea mi-a interzis să vin la nunta ei regală pentru că uniforma mea de comandantă a Marinei Militare „ar fi stricat fotografiile”, dar în aceeași seară regele m-a întrebat în fața tuturor de ce fusesem ținută departe

I crawled down through the mud. My hands were cut on the stones.

“Wake up!” I shouted.

His gray eyes opened with difficulty.

“Who are you?”

“The waitress you did not listen to.”

The tree creaked.

Dante looked toward the door.

“Go.”

“Not yet.”

“The car will fall at any moment.”

“Then you have to get out in time.”

I grabbed his arm. He was twice my weight. The first time I could not move him. The second time my feet slipped in the mud. The third time I pulled with all my strength.

The tree branch cracked.

Dante fell out through the window, and I fell to the ground with him. At that same moment, the car tore away from its support and disappeared into the abyss.

For several seconds, there was only the sound of rain.

Then headlights lit the road from above.

Black SUVs stopped one after another. Men jumped out. One saw my bloody hands, pulled out a gun, and aimed it at me.

Then another raised his gun too.

Dante grabbed my wrist.

“Do not shoot.”

Everyone stopped.

He turned toward me. Rain mixed with the blood on his face.

“Now tell me, waitress,” he said in an oddly calm voice, “how did you know my brakes would fail?…”

“How did you know my brakes would fail?” Dante repeated.

There was no shouting in his voice. That proved more frightening. Shouting scares a person, while calmness forces him to imagine everything.

I was still lying in the mud. Dante’s fingers were wrapped around my wrist, while the men standing around him kept their guns raised. Cold rainwater ran down my neck. A small brass-colored keychain hung from my right hand—my mother’s old talisman, which I had carried since childhood.

“I heard it in the restaurant,” I said.

“From whom?”

“From your wife and a man who is not her husband.”

The guard standing nearby changed expression.

“Sir, this woman is lying.”

Dante did not even look at him.

“What was the man wearing?”

“A dark green jacket. A gold watch on his left hand. Vanessa called him ‘Leo.’”

This time coldness appeared in Dante’s eyes.

“Leonardo Voss,” one guard said quietly.

The other took out his phone.

“Leave someone at the restaurant. Now.”

“No,” I said, pulling my hand away from Dante. “You have to go back there before they realize you survived.”

For the first time, Dante looked at me as if I were no longer merely a strange witness.

“If you want to go back there, why are you helping me?”

“Because I cannot watch a dead person.”

“My death would make many people happy.”

“I do not know those people. You are still alive.”

An almost imperceptible smile appeared on his face, but disappeared immediately.

“Call a doctor,” he ordered. “And no one touch this woman.”

They put me in the SUV. The cabin smelled of leather and smoke. Mud fell from my wet shoes onto the floor. Dante sat beside me, and blood was running down his shoulder.

“We have to take you to a hospital,” I said.

“First, a safe house.”

“I need a hospital.”

“I need a doctor who cannot sell what I say.”

“And I am not your prisoner.”

Dante looked out the window.

“We will find that out soon.”

We arrived at his house on the outskirts of the city, behind high stone walls. It was one in the morning. The lamps mounted on the gate turned the raindrops into golden lines.

The doctor treated my hands. He put stitches in Dante’s shoulder. I was sitting on the sofa and looking at the old wounds when one guard placed a small plastic bag on the table.

Inside was my restaurant card.

“They found this in the car,” he said. “Under the back seat.”

I recognized the card immediately. Several weeks earlier, I had found it in the corner of the restaurant, under Dante’s table. His personal number was written on the back. That was the number I called.

“I found it in your restaurant.”

“By accident?” Dante asked.

“Yes.”

“And you did not call before that?”

“No. I did not want trouble.”

He stared at the card for a long time.

!!! Öt millió dollárt vittem az árvaházba, de amikor egy kislány apának szólított, az igazgató arca hirtelen elsápadt

“Trouble found you anyway.”

At that moment his phone rang. Dante answered, listened for several seconds, and then his face froze.

“Vanessa is not home,” he said.

I felt coldness in my stomach.

“Does she know you survived?”

“Not yet. But now she knows the car was found.”

“Then you have to run.”

“I never run from my home.”

Dante entered the study. I stood by the door because I was afraid to be alone. Photographs hung on the walls, but in one large frame Vanessa’s face had been covered with a knife. Dante did not have time to notice it, but I did.

“Why didn’t you tell me immediately?” he asked.

“What?”

“That my wife was sitting there.”

“Because if I accused your wife, your men could kill me.”

“My men do not kill innocent people.”

“Every powerful man says that until some innocent person ends up in the way.”

The room fell silent.

Dante lowered his head slightly.

“You are afraid of me.”

“Yes.”

“But you still saved me.”

“Fear cannot always make a person do something bad.”

The sound of tires came from outside. All the guards tensed at once. Dante walked to the window.

“That is Vanessa’s car,” he said.

The door opened. Vanessa entered. Her hair was wet, and such worry was drawn on her face that for a moment I too believed she truly did not know what had happened.

“Dante! God, you are alive!”

She rushed toward him.

Dante did not move.

Vanessa stretched her arms toward him, but stopped halfway.

“Who is this woman?”

“The woman who pulled your husband from death today,” I said.

Vanessa’s eyes stopped on me.

For only one second.

But in that one second, all the fear disappeared from her face, and something heavier appeared in its place.

Dante saw that too.

“Vanessa,” he said. “Tell me why you did not answer when you called from the car?”

Her hand slipped into her bag.

And I saw her take a small dark object out of it and hide it behind her back.

Dante took one step toward her.

Vanessa said quietly:

“I will explain everything to you, but first we have to remove that woman from the room…”

And just then the study telephone rang…

The telephone ring froze the whole house.

Vanessa’s hand was still in the bag. Dante shifted his gaze to her fingers, then signaled to one of the guards. The man seized the woman’s wrist and pulled a small black recorder from the bag.

Vanessa lost her composure for the first time.

“Let go of me!”

“Dante, this is ridiculous,” she said. “I am your wife.”

“That is exactly why this is very serious,” Dante replied.

The telephone rang again.

I stood against the wall and squeezed the brass-colored keychain so hard that its edge dug into my palm. This little object had always calmed me. That night it could help me with nothing.

Dante picked up the receiver.

“Speak.”

The voice that came from the other side was loud enough for all of us to hear.

“We checked the car. The accident was not accidental. The brake lines had been cut beforehand.”

Vanessa lowered her eyes.

Dante slowly looked at her.

“What else?”

“There was a camera on the road. We have already taken the recording. Vanessa’s lover, Leonardo Voss, entered the garage two hours before the accident.”

Vanessa quickly raised her head.

“That is a lie!”

“Play the recording,” Dante said.

The guard placed the phone on the table. A blurry image, clouded by rain, appeared on the screen. Leonardo stood by the garage door. He was holding a bag of tools. Then Vanessa’s car appeared in the frame. The woman looked around and let him inside.

The recording had no sound, but no one needed an explanation.

Vanessa stepped back.

“Dante, listen to me.”

“I have already listened to you,” he said.

“I was with him only to watch your enemies.”

“Were you watching my brakes too?”

“Leo did it! I did not know he would really do it!”

“You told him in the restaurant that by midnight you would be a widow.”

!!! TEIL 4 — Eine Fremde nahm mir im Flugzeug den bezahlten Sitz weg, doch als meine Tochter aufstand, erstarrte die ganze Kabine

The color left Vanessa’s face.

I thought Dante would shout. Instead, he switched on the recorder. The voice recorded in the restaurant’s private room immediately sounded through the room.

“The brakes?”

“I cut them so no one will realize immediately.”

“By midnight I will be a widow.”

Vanessa covered her mouth with her hand.

Dante looked at the recorder, then at me.

“Did you record this?”

“No. Your man made the recording when he checked the backup system for the restaurant cameras. I only told him where to look.”

Vanessa lunged toward me.

“You are destroying everything! Do you know whom you are opposing?”

“I know whom I saved.”

Dante raised his hand, and the guards blocked Vanessa’s way.

“Where is Leo?” he asked.

Vanessa was silent.

“I am asking you for the last time.”

“At the old railway warehouse,” she said with difficulty. “But Dante, I swear, he only wanted to frighten you. He needed money. And I wanted to leave you.”

“Leaving is possible. Murder is not.”

At that moment my phone rang. An unknown number appeared on the screen. I answered.

“Mrs. Fields?”

“Yes.”

“I am not your lawyer, but you must listen to me now. The door to your apartment has been broken. A neighbor called the police. Everything inside has been thrown around.”

My breath caught.

“Who entered?”

“One man is visible on the camera. His face cannot be made out, but he is holding your restaurant card.”

Dante took the phone from my hand.

“Who are you?”

“Alexander Hale, federal investigator for Dante Moretti. I cannot trust your men now. Move Mrs. Fields into protection and do not warn anyone.”

Dante ended the call.

Vanessa suddenly came alive.

“What did you tell that man?”

Dante looked at her.

“Which man?”

Vanessa’s face changed. She knew she had made a mistake.