Rule One: Don’t Fall for the Don Chapter 06

Rule One: Don’t Fall for the Don Chapter 06: Julian

I don’t remember getting out of the car.

I remember Benny’s hand closing hard around my elbow and his voice saying, “Nora. Nora, who is that-”

And I remember the door opening, and Julian Voss stepping out in a beautiful coat with a beautiful haircut and that easy, boyish, reasonable smile that had fooled two law firms, one police department, and me.

“There she is,” he said. “You look great. The city suits you.”

“How did you find me?”

“You used your real license number on a New York work application.” He said it like a joke. Like we were sharing one. “Charming block. Loud, though. The blond one screams at night.”

He’d been listening. He’d been close enough to hear.

“Get in your car,” I said. My voice came out steady and I still don’t know how.

“I drove four hours-”

“Get in your car.”

“Nora.” He stepped forward and the smile thinned at the edges. “I have been so patient with you.”

Then a shadow came off the restaurant steps, crossed the street, and stopped between us.

Rafe didn’t shout. That’s the thing about Rafe. He just stood there, and

suddenly the whole block felt smaller.

“Back up,” he said.

Julian looked him up and down, still smiling. “And you are?”

“Back up.”

“This is a private conversation between two people who-”

“You’re standing in front of my building.” Rafe’s voice dropped. “Take one more step toward her and they will be hosing you off Van Brunt Street.”

Behind me the restaurant door banged. Then again. Then again. Nico. Sal. Gio. Five of them out on the sidewalk in socks and jackets, Otto on a leash with his hackles up – and Gio, quietly, holding up his phone. Filming.

Julian laughed like it was all so silly.

He got in the car. He rolled the window down before he pulled out.

“I’ll see you around, Nora,” he said. “I always do.”

They sat me at the kitchen table. Nobody said I told you so, because nobody had told me anything, because I’d told them nothing.

So I told them everything.

Twenty-two months. Four months of dating, eighteen months of him

refusing to understand the word no. Flowers on my windshield. A slashed tire. Three hundred and eleven texts in one night from eleven different numbers. The complaint that got me reassigned. The resignation. The four hours on 1-95.

“Reports?” Sal asked.

“Three. He’s never touched me. He’s never threatened me in writing. They said-” my voice cracked, and I hated it, “-they said come back when there’s something to charge him with.”

Nico put his head in his hands.

Gio said, very quietly, “The necklaces.”

I froze. “How do you-”

“You put them in your drawer. I was looking for tape.” He looked ill. “There were two, Nora.”

Rafe hadn’t moved or spoken in ten minutes. He was against the counter with his arms crossed, and when he finally spoke, everyone flinched.

“When was the second one.”

“Wednesday,” I whispered. “On my pillow. My door was locked. The chair was still under the handle.”

The kitchen went silent in a way I felt in my teeth.

Rafe pushed off the counter and walked out. I heard the street door. I heard him check the frame. I heard him go through that entire building, every window, one at a time, in the dark.

He came back with his face carved out of stone.

“Cellar hatch in the alley,” he said. “The padlock’s been cut and hung back up so it looks closed. I’d say two weeks.”

“Rafe-”

“Nico, call your grandmother, every lock in this building changes tomorrow, I’m paying. Sal drives her to work. Gio picks her up. Benny – that video goes to my lawyer tonight, timestamped, and a copy to everyone in this room.” He grabbed his keys. “Nobody in this house sleeps on an unlocked floor again. And Matteo does not sleep alone.”

He stopped in the doorway and looked at me for the first time since the

street.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

And there was something in his voice – raw and furious and unbearably gentle – that split my chest open.

“Because I’m tired of being a problem,” I said.

He crossed the kitchen in three steps and stopped a foot away from me.

“You’re not a problem,” he said. “You’re the reason I come home.”

Then somebody knocked on the street door.

And all six of us turned to look at it.