A Rich Woman Paid Me $10,000 to Kiss Chicago's Most Feared Mafia Boss

Ravi entered the room with a gun in one hand and blood on his cuff.

I backed away from the laptop.

“What happened?”

“One of my men found a tracking device under the car.”

My stomach dropped.

“From the bank?”

“Possibly.”

“Where is Sadi?”

“With Mrs. Alvarez in the interior bedroom.”

I ran past him.

Sadi was sitting on the bed with her knees tucked to her chest while Mrs. Alvarez held her.

“What’s happening?” my sister asked.

I forced my voice to stay steady.

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

Sadi gave me the look she had inherited from Dad.

“Diane.”

I crouched in front of her.

“Someone may have followed us. Ravi’s people are moving us somewhere else.”

Her face went pale.

“Because of Dad?”

I hesitated.

That was enough.

Sadi looked down at her hands.

“Did Dad do something bad?”

“No.”

The answer came instantly.

I believed it.

“He found people doing bad things and tried to stop them.”

“Then why are they mad at us?”

Because bad people often punished the easiest person instead of the right one.

I did not say that to a ten-year-old.

“Because they’re scared of what Dad knew.”

Sadi looked toward the door.

“Is Ravi a bad person?”

I had no answer simple enough.

“He made bad choices,” I said finally. “But Dad trusted him to protect us.”

“Do you?”

I thought of the cream letter.

Make him earn every inch of your trust.

“I’m deciding.”

We moved forty minutes later.

This time, Ravi did not tell me where we were going until we arrived.

I complained the entire way.

He listened the entire way.

The property was a renovated brick house in Lincoln Park with tall fences, security cameras, and a backyard big enough for Sadi to forget we were hiding.

Mrs. Alvarez went home only after Ravi promised a driver would take her door to door and after she threatened him with a wooden spoon if anything happened to us.

Ravi accepted the threat seriously.

I liked him slightly more for that.

By noon, the tracking device had been traced to a private contractor connected to Voss Civic Trust.

By one, a copy of the brake report had been authenticated.

By two, Ravi’s attorney confirmed that the beneficiary change on Dad’s $750,000 policy had been processed by a broker who later became a financial consultant for Victor Voss.

At two fifteen, I vomited in the downstairs bathroom.

Not because I was sick.

Because grief had changed shape.

For two years, I had blamed my father.

I blamed him every time rent was late.

I blamed him when Sadi cried because we could not afford a school trip.

I blamed him when I sold Mom’s earrings to pay the electric bill.

I had loved him.

But part of me had been furious that he died leaving us nothing but debt.

Now I knew someone had taken the money he meant to leave us.

Someone had possibly taken his life too.

When I came out of the bathroom, Ravi was standing in the hallway.

He held out a glass of water.

I took it.

“You look terrible,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I drank half the glass.

“What does LANTERN mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said the man who betrayed you is still alive.”

“Yes.”

“Who is he?”

Ravi looked toward the window.

“My cousin, Elias.”

“Your cousin betrayed you and you kept him around?”

“I did not know it was him until six months ago.”

“What happened six months ago?”

“I found a payment record from the year your father warned me about the assassination attempt. It came from a Voss-controlled account. The recipient code was E.G.”

“Elias Greedy.”

“Yes.”

“So arrest him.”

Ravi looked at me.

“For what?”

I stared at him.

That was not the answer I expected from a mafia boss.

“You have a record.”

“A transfer record with initials. No proof of purpose. No proof he ordered anything. No proof it connects to your parents.”

“Then why is he still in your organization?”

“Because if Elias believes I trust him, he continues talking to people I need to identify.”

I hated how much that made sense.

“Does he know about me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you do not know enough.”

“No.”

He said it without defensiveness.

That made it harder to stay angry.

I sat on the bottom stair.

After a moment, Ravi sat one step below me.

The position put us nearly eye level.

“Why did Catherine do it?” I asked.

“I have been asking myself the same thing.”

“She recognized my name.”

“Yes.”

“She picked me out of eighty servers.”

“Yes.”

“And she chose you.”

“Yes.”

I turned to him.

“So the kiss wasn’t random.”

“No.”

That realization landed harder than I expected.

Catherine had not looked around the ballroom and decided to humiliate a poor waitress for fun.

She had selected me.

She had selected Ravi.

She had put us together in front of hundreds of witnesses.

“Why?” I whispered.

Ravi’s phone rang.

He looked at the screen.

CATHERINE VOSS.

We stared at each other.

He answered on speaker.

“Catherine.”

Her voice came through breathless.

“I need to speak to Diane.”

Ravi’s face hardened.

“No.”

I held out my hand.

He looked at me.

“My father said my choices.”

His jaw flexed.

Then he passed me the phone.

“This is Diane.”

Catherine went silent.

Then she said, “You need to leave Ravi’s house.”

I looked at him.

“This isn’t his house.”

“Whatever safe property he put you in. Leave.”

“Why?”

“Because my father knows where you are.”

Ravi stood.

“How?” he demanded.

Catherine ignored him.

“Diane, listen to me. I know you think I’m a monster after last night. Maybe I deserved that. But I did not pay you to kiss Ravi because I wanted to laugh at you.”

My grip tightened around the phone.

“Then why?”

Catherine inhaled shakily.

“Because I needed him to notice you before my father’s men took you.”

Silence filled the room.

Even Ravi looked stunned.

I stood.

“You could have walked up to him and said, ‘Hey, protect this waitress.’”

“No. My father had people in the ballroom. If I warned Ravi directly, they would know I betrayed him.”

“So you made me look like an idiot instead.”

“I made you impossible for Ravi to ignore.”

My anger flickered.

Catherine continued.

“The dress, the dare, the laughing—it was theater. I knew Ravi would demand your name. I knew the second he heard Harper, he would react if the old story was true.”

“You knew my father?”

“No. But I found your photograph in my father’s study.”

My blood went cold.

“When?”

“Three weeks ago.”

“Why were you searching his study?”

Her voice broke.

“Because I found out he lied to me about my mother’s death too.”

Ravi’s eyes narrowed.

Catherine lowered her voice.

“My mother did not die from an aneurysm. She was preparing to leave him. She had copies of financial records. Two days later, she was dead.”

I stopped breathing.

Catherine whispered, “Diane, your father and my mother were working together.”

Ravi swore softly.

I pressed the phone to my ear.

“What proof do you have?”

“A recording.”

“Of what?”

“My father admitting he had Daniel Harper’s car ‘handled.’”

The world tilted.

My knees weakened.

Ravi took my elbow before I fell.

Catherine continued, crying now.

“I heard him say your father’s name. I heard him say the girls were supposed to disappear with the evidence. I didn’t know what it meant until I found your picture.”

My mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

“Where are you?” Ravi asked.

“I’m not telling you.”

“If your father knows you have that recording—”

“He doesn’t. Yet.”

“Catherine.”

“I’ll send Diane a location. One hour. She comes alone.”

“No,” Ravi said.

I looked at him.

Catherine gave a humorless laugh.

“Still controlling everyone, Ravi?”

His face went cold.

“You are asking a woman whose parents your father killed to walk into an unknown location alone.”

“I’m asking her to decide whether she wants the truth.”

The call ended.

My phone buzzed ten seconds later.

An address appeared.

An old church on the South Side.

Ravi looked at it.

“You are not going alone.”

I crossed my arms.

“My father literally predicted this conversation.”

“Your father was irritating.”

“So am I.”

“I noticed.”

For one absurd second, our eyes met and something warm passed between us.

Then I remembered my mother’s crushed car.

The warmth vanished.

“I’m going,” I said.

Ravi nodded once.

“Then I am going too.”

“She said alone.”

“I will stay out of sight.”

“That still counts.”

“Diane.”

“Ravi.”

He stared at me.

I stared back.

Finally, he sighed.

“Your father absolutely would have enjoyed watching this.”

Despite everything, I smiled.

An hour later, I walked into the abandoned church alone.

At least, Catherine believed I was alone.

Ravi and two of his men were three blocks away.

I had agreed to that because I was brave, not suicidal.

Catherine stood near the altar in jeans, a black coat, and no jewelry.

She looked younger without the red dress.

She also looked terrified.

“I’m sorry,” she said immediately.

“For the kiss?”

“For all of it.”

She held out an envelope.

Inside was another five thousand dollars.

I frowned.

“You already paid me.”

“This isn’t the dare money.”

“Then what is it?”

“The amount my father’s charity stole from your family last year through a fake education grant.”

I stared at her.

“What?”

Catherine swallowed.

“He has been taking from you in small ways for years. Fees. denied aid. debt purchases. Your landlord’s holding company is partly owned by a Voss subsidiary.”

My stomach turned.

“He kept us poor?”

“He kept you unstable. Poor people move. Poor people lose paperwork. Poor people are easier to discredit.”

Every late notice flashed through my mind.

Every denied application.

Every time I wondered why one emergency seemed to arrive after another.

Catherine pulled a small recorder from her pocket.

“This is the recording.”

I reached for it.

A gunshot shattered a stained-glass window.

Catherine screamed.

I dropped to the floor.