My friends sent me jokingly to Boston’s most dangerous man, but after my first words his smile disappeared

When I entered the restaurant, the woman standing in the corner of the bar quietly said: “My God, they really sent her to him.”

I stopped so abruptly that the waiter coming behind me almost collided with me. In the hall lit by crystal chandeliers, a tall man slowly stood up at a distant table. He was wearing a dark gray suit, and his face had such calmness that it immediately silenced everyone in the room.

Daniel Brooks.

Everyone in Boston knew that name. The newspapers called him an influential businessman, but people lowered their voices about him and said only one word—the mafia boss.

Three hours earlier, I had been standing with the owner in the bookstore when my phone rang.

“Today, at seven-thirty. The Grand Oak. A blind date. Don’t you dare cancel,” Olivia told me.

“Your message was followed by three laughing signs. That is already enough reason for me not to come.”

“Just half an hour, Emily.”

“The last time you joked with me, you locked Megan outside in a bathrobe.”

“She laughs about that story herself now.”

“Because she moved to another state.”

Olivia was persistent. After Jason ended our four-year relationship over Chinese food, while eating leftovers, with one sentence—he said he loved another woman—I refused dates. Later I learned that he had been seeing that woman for almost a year.

Loneliness was not exactly happy, but it could not hurt me unexpectedly.

In the end I agreed. Only thirty minutes, I told myself.

And now I was looking at my reflection in a mirrored column: a simple dark blue dress, silver earrings, six-year-old shoes, and a bag with an ink stain left near its zipper. One dinner in this restaurant probably cost as much as my weekly groceries.

Daniel pulled out a chair as soon as he saw me.

“Emily?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Daniel.”

“I figured that out.”

The smallest shadow of a smile appeared near his lips.

“Am I that easy to recognize?”

“People talk a lot about you.”

“I hope they say good things.”

A nervous laugh burst out of me. He did not get angry, nor did he appear embarrassed. He simply looked at me, as if he were reading the truth hidden between my words.

Seven seconds passed. The candle flame on the table swayed like a sob.

I realized that quickly ending the humiliation would be easier.

“Before you order anything, I have to tell you one thing.”

Daniel folded his fingers together.

“That sounds serious.”

“My friends sent me here as a joke.”

Everything changed on his face.

Not anger. Something colder.

“As a joke?”

“They thought it would be funny to send someone like me to a man like you.”

“A man like me?”

I looked toward the bar and my breath caught. Behind the column sat Olivia and our two friends. They were watching us and barely holding back their laughter.

Daniel looked toward them. The smiles on their faces disappeared one after another.

Then he looked at me again, slowly moved his hand toward the inside pocket of his jacket, and even the clinking of glasses throughout the hall stopped.

“Emily, I think you and your friends need to figure out for whom this evening was actually a joke…”

Daniel took a small black recorder out of his pocket. He placed it on the table, but did not turn it on.

“It is not a weapon,” he told me quietly. “Although sometimes the truth is more dangerous.”

Olivia stood up and came toward us.

“Daniel, it was just a harmless joke.”

“Then why did you record her arrival?”

Olivia’s face changed.

“We did not record anything.”

“You did not,” he said, and signaled to the waiter.

A security officer came from the corridor. He was holding a silver tablet.

“Ms. Carter, your friends wanted to have your reaction recorded on camera. Does this restaurant belong to them?” I asked.

“No,” Daniel replied. “But everything in this building passes through my permission.”

Olivia turned pale.

“Emily, come on. Now.”

For the first time during the entire evening, I no longer felt that I was on her side.

“No, not until you tell me why you brought me here.”

Daniel opened his phone and turned the screen toward me. My friends’ correspondence was visible there. My eyes froze on one phrase: “If she comes, Brooks will definitely be interested.”

“What does this mean?” I asked.

Olivia stepped back.

Daniel said calmly:

“This is only the beginning. Your name is also in the file, Emily…”

My name was in the file, but beneath it was written not a date number, but a case number. Daniel placed the tablet on the table and turned the screen toward me. A photograph was visible there: me in the bookstore, at the cash register, several weeks earlier. In the second photograph, Olivia and our friends stood at the back door of the warehouse.

“Who photographed you?” I asked.

“My security cameras,” Daniel answered. “That day, an old manuscript left in your store belonged to my company.”

“I didn’t leave anything.”

“I know.”

Olivia gripped the table. The silver polish on her fingernails was peeling.

“Emily, please, listen to me. Everything is not as it appears.”

“Then tell me how it is.”

“One item was found in your store. A small copper key. It was beside your desk.”

Daniel opened a thin folder and handed me a photograph. I recognized the key immediately. Several months earlier it had fallen out of an old book cover, and I had kept it in a small wooden box under the cash register.

“This key was found in my store, but why should it interest you?”

Daniel looked at me for a long time.

“Because this key opens the warehouse where the documents lost after my father’s death were kept.”

“And you think I stole them?”

“No. I think someone used your name.”

Security played a video on the tablet. Olivia was visible entering my store at night. In her hand she held the same bag she was carrying over her shoulder that evening.

Olivia screamed loudly:

“It’s edited!”

Daniel answered without agitation:

“The time, face, and voice recording all match one another.”

In the video Olivia leaned toward the camera and said: “Emily will not understand anything. We will bring her to Daniel, and then everything will be put on her.”

Blood roared in my ears. I could no longer breathe.

“Why?” I barely said.

Olivia lowered her eyes.

“Because you are the daughter of the man because of whom Daniel’s father died.”

For the first time, real shock appeared on Daniel’s face.

“What are you saying?”

“Emily’s father, Richard Carter, worked for your family years ago. He took the documents, but before his death he left one copy with Emily’s mother. We thought the copy was with Emily.”

“My mother died seven years ago,” I said.

Daniel took a rolled letter from the folder. I recognized my mother’s handwriting on the paper.

“If they ever bring you to the Brookses, trust only the person who shows you this letter.”

“Why didn’t you show me this from the beginning?” I asked.

“Because I still did not know whom your friends served,” Daniel replied.

At that moment his phone rang. The call was from an unknown number. Daniel answered and listened for only a few seconds.

Then the color left his face.

“Who was it?” I asked.

He slowly lowered the phone.

“Your father.”

I thought my father had died ten years ago. But a man’s voice could still be heard from the other side of the line…