A Vet Saved a Mafia Boss’s Dying German Shepherd at Midnight — Then Discovered the Owner Was the Boy Who Stole Her First Kiss and Vanished 14 Years Ago

Chapter 6

Nick stood on the sidewalk and read the sign. Good Fella’s Slice House. Red and white, cheerful font, letters doing their very best. He turned to Jerry.

Jerry lifted both shoulders. “It was the only place I could buy that fast. The owner needed cash.” He spread his hands. “The name was part of the deal.”

Nick turned back to the awning, back to Jerry. He said nothing, which with Nick covered a wide range of meanings, and went inside. Tom and Jerry followed.

The place was small and warm and smelled like garlic and oregano — a genuine neighborhood spot, the kind that had a loyal lunch crowd and a handwritten specials board and absolutely no reason to exist as a front for anything. Behind the counter, two employees in Good Fella’s aprons stood very still. The taller one, mid-twenties, dark-eyed, had gone the color of someone whose body had just made a decision without consulting his brain. The shorter one was studying Nick with an expression that had nothing to do with fear.

“Is that Dominic Ferraro?” Mark said, low, through barely moving lips.

Troy tilted his head. “Who?”

“My uncle worked for his family. Shipping, port logistics, some other things.” Mark stopped. “You just don’t go near those people.”

“I don’t know about any of that.” Troy’s eyes moved unhurriedly up and then down. “But I wouldn’t mind climbing those shoulders.”

Nick had walked the length of the front room and pushed open the door to the back. Exposed brick, storage shelving, a single bare bulb. He stood in the middle of it, hands in his pockets, turning slowly. “Get this decorated.” He came back through the door. “And get bulletproof glass on the entrance.”

Tom spoke without turning his head. “The back room needs a second exit. See to it.”

Jerry was already at the counter, planted in front of Mark and Troy. “Gentlemen.” His eyes moved to Troy, stayed one beat longer than necessary, then came back to center. “The place runs exactly as it has been. Same hours, same menu, same everything. The new owner’s name is Nick Brown.”

Troy’s chin lifted. “Isn’t that Dominic Ferr—”

Mark’s elbow found his ribs. Jerry reached into his jacket. The movement was unhurried, almost casual, and when his hand came out, the gun was just there — resting against the fabric, not raised, not pointed, simply present, the way certain facts are simply present. “Nick Brown,” Jerry said pleasantly. “Say it back to me.”

Mark and Troy exchanged a glance, then said, in unison, “Nick Brown.”

“Beautiful.” Jerry straightened his jacket. “Back to your day, guys. Exactly like before.”

In the car heading back toward the office, Nick’s phone was already in his hand. He typed the message before he’d fully thought through the wording, which was unusual for him. Dinner tonight? I owe you one. He put the phone face down on the seat.

Across town, Jen was at her desk going through the afternoon schedule when the notification came in. She read it. Read it again. Set the sandwich down. She typed back, Seven work for you? His call came before she’d put the phone down.

“Still into seafood?”

“Actually.” She turned a pen in her hand. “What about your pizza place?”

“My pizza place,” he murmured.

“You own it, right? I’d rather do that.” She kept her voice easy. “I like pizza more than I like being impressed.”

In the back seat, Nick’s expression shifted in a way that Tom, glancing in the rearview mirror, filed away without comment. She was the same. Fourteen years, and she was exactly the same — no performance, no positioning, just the direct, uncluttered version of what she actually wanted.

“Seven o’clock. I’ll pick you up.” He ended the call. “Jerry. Call the restaurant. Tell Mark and Troy we have a guest tonight. Everything needs to be right. Good wine.” He slid the phone into his jacket. “Nothing flashy.”

The black dress was out. Jen held it up, considered it, put it back. A perfectly good dress, a great dress technically, but she was going to a pizza place owned by a man she’d last seen when she was sixteen, and showing up in a cocktail dress would say things about her current mental state that she preferred to keep private. Jeans. A soft white blouse. A little blush, a little lip gloss, hair down.

She checked the mirror and smiled before she’d made a conscious decision to. The memory arrived without warning, the way they always did — the treehouse, the yellow string lights strung along the rafters, the two of them shouting every word of We Are Young at the top of their lungs at eleven at night while the whole street presumably tried to sleep. And then Nick’s glasses. She’d sat on them. Both lenses intact, frames bent beyond recovery, and he’d spent the next several hours squinting at everything like a man trying to read the sun. He’d still tried to dance. He’d reached for her hand, missed, veered slightly left, and walked directly out the open window onto the roof, where he’d stayed for a mortifying moment before gravity made its opinion known.

She bit her lip. Oh, Nick. He’d been her first crush and her first kiss. And if she was being honest with herself — which, standing in front of her mirror in Brooklyn on a Tuesday night, she apparently was — he’d been the standard she’d been running against ever since, without fully admitting it.

The doorbell rang, and she was downstairs before she’d finished the thought. He was in a dark leather jacket, jeans, and a white t-shirt that was doing absolutely nothing to downplay the problem. And they both looked at each other, then down at themselves — jeans, casual tops, completely unplanned.

Nick laughed first. “Still matching?”

Something in her chest loosened that she hadn’t known was tight. Before she could answer, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her cheek, unhurried and easy, as if they’d been doing this for years. When he pulled back, they were close enough that she could smell his cologne, and her brain, which had been running a mostly professional operation all week, briefly staged a small internal coup.

“Come on.” He nodded toward the street, where a black Ferrari sat at the curb like it had always lived there. “Let’s go get some pizza.”

She watched him from the passenger side, sideways, the way she used to. His hands were easy on the wheel, and there was something in his expression — not quite a smile, just settled, like being here was exactly where he’d intended to end up.

And after a while, without taking his eyes off the road: “I still feel eighteen when I’m with you. I don’t know what to do with that.”

Jen reached over without thinking and touched the scar at his temple, light and brief. “God, it’s still there. Every time I see it, I think of that night.”

His voice was low, certain. “I don’t mind the reminder.”

“Nick, you should have told me you basically saw double without those glasses. I would have held on to you.”

“You did hold on to me.” He glanced over. “Right after I went out the window.”

She laughed, the real kind, fast and completely beyond her control — and he watched it happen with the expression of someone who had just confirmed something he already suspected.

The car turned onto the block, and Jen sat up. “Oh, I know this street.” She leaned toward the window as the sign came into view — red and white, cheerful. Good Fella’s Slice House. “Oh my god, I walked past this place. This is yours?”

“Recent acquisition.”

“The name is very committed.”

Mark and Troy were stationed behind the counter when they walked in, backs straight, expressions arranged into what could generously be described as professional warmth. “Good evening, Mr. Brown.”

Nick poured the wine himself without being asked. “We’re family here.”

Jen watched him over the rim of her glass. “You always had a way of making people feel like family. Even back then. The first time we met, I felt close to you almost immediately.”

Nick looked at her for a moment, the way you do when something still hasn’t fully landed even though it’s been right in front of you. His head moved slowly, side to side. His voice was quiet, almost to himself. “I still can’t believe you’re right here.”

“So, veterinary.” He set the bottle down. “Of all the things I imagined for you.”

“Yeah. Of all the things I imagined for you.” She came back with an amused voice, one eyebrow up. “Pizza and export business wasn’t exactly at the top of the list. Your test scores were insane. I genuinely thought you’d end up building rockets.”

A faint smile crossed his face. “It’s nice to know you remembered me better than I actually was.”

The warmth in the room shifted slightly. Jen’s smile stayed, but something behind it went quiet. “That morning. Your house was just empty. I couldn’t even find an address. Nothing.”

“The night before, you’d kissed me. It was my first kiss.” His voice was even.

She set the glass down carefully. “Mine, too, actually.”

His eyes didn’t move from hers. He reached into his jacket and set his phone on the table, a photo already on the screen — the two of them in the treehouse, the yellow string lights above their heads, both caught mid-look, the world outside dark and small and very far away.

Jen stared at it. Her throat tightened. “You kept it. Fourteen years.”

“Never deleted it.”

She reached across the table and held out her hand — not to hold, but palm up, waiting. He recognized it immediately, one side of his mouth lifting, and he reached over, and they ran through the handshake they’d invented at fourteen. Knock, slide, tap, lock, release. Both of them grinning at the end of it like the idiots they apparently still were.

The pizza arrived. Pepperoni, double mushroom. “You remembered?”

“Some things you just don’t forget.”

They stayed until the candles had burned low, the conversation moving easily back through old memories into things they’d never said, occasionally somewhere neither of them had planned to go. At some point Jen said something that made him laugh — really laugh — and she stored the sound away before she could stop herself. Once, when she reached for her glass, she caught him watching her with an expression that was warm and unguarded and not quite finished. He was the one who looked away.

Outside, in a car parked at the far end of the block, Tom was working through a large slice when Jerry lowered the binoculars. “This was actually a solid investment,” Tom said.

“Don’t eat anything more fatty.”

“I’m not on a diet, Jerry. And this is margarita.”

At the other end of the block, a man in a dark coat raised his phone. “Boss, looks like another deal going down. Now it’s a pizza place. The vet’s with him. Ferraro showed her something on his phone. Then they shook on it.”

Lorenzo stood at his window with a glass of whiskey, the city spread out below him in its usual indifferent grid. Of course he did. He swirled the glass once. Pizza shops. Vet clinics. Handshakes with doctors. He watched his own reflection in the dark glass. You think you’re being clever, Dominic, taking over the market piece by piece where no one’s looking. But I am looking.

He ended the call and stood there a moment longer, the glass warm in his hand.

At her door, Jen and Nick stood facing each other, and neither of them had moved toward it yet. “You could come up,” she offered. “Check on Caesar before you go. He’ll lose his mind.”

“I’m picking him up in the morning. Better to let him rest.” He was still there, hands in his jacket pockets, the street quiet behind him. “Fourteen years, and we just picked up right where we left off.”

Jen tilted her head. “Where we left off?”

He looked down, a slow pull at the corner of his mouth, and when his eyes came back up to hers, the sentence he hadn’t finished yet was still in them. “We should do this more often.”

Her hands were in her cardigan pockets. “I’d like that.”

He leaned in for her cheek, and she turned at the same moment, and their noses met with a small, undignified collision that neither of them had planned for. They both pulled back. For a second neither of them moved, caught somewhere between laughing and not. Then Jen pressed her lips together. “Good night, Nick.”

She got the door open and herself inside before her face could do anything further. The hallway was dark, and she stood in it, not quite ready to move yet. Nick Brown. She climbed the stairs slowly. Halfway up, she stopped. Can we really just pick up from where we left off?

Cleo appeared at the top of the stairs, assessed the situation with complete accuracy, and walked away.

On the street, Nick crossed to a car parked just around the corner, half in shadow, which had absolutely zero business being there. He knocked on the window. Tom rolled it down. In his hand was a slice of pizza.

Nick took in the pizza, then Tom, then the pizza again. “Didn’t I tell you not to follow me?”

“Twenty-four-seven, boss.” Tom’s voice carried no awareness of any conflict.

Jerry leaned forward from the passenger seat. “You know, we can’t leave you alone out here, especially after the port contracts. The Calvetis don’t forget things like that.”

“Jerry.” Nick stepped back from the window. “Remember who you work for? And it’s not my mother.”

Jerry’s mouth closed.

Nick walked back to the Ferrari. Jen’s window was still lit. He stood looking up at it for a moment. Jen. The thought came before he could stop it — the version of this where he told her everything. Why he’d left Milbrook without a word. What he actually did. What it would mean for her to know.

What if I lose you again?

He got in. The door closed, and by the time it did, the expression was already gone, replaced by the one that ran operations, the one that didn’t leave things unfinished. Dominic Ferraro, all the way back.