Cracked Tile Threat

By noon, Bellini’s had stopped pretending the morning was normal.

Emily stood at the back prep counter with a stack of menus in her hand and stared at the brick on the kitchen floor. It had cracked one tile and left dust in a little gray fan. A folded note was taped to it.

Weakness gets noticed.

Marcus had already called the police. The manager kept saying the word “isolated” like that made it less ugly. Two cooks smoked by the alley door in the cold, then came back in with their collars up.

Emily folded the note once and held it in her fist.

Vincent stood by the host stand, dark coat open, looking like he belonged in the place more than the chandeliers did. He’d been there twenty minutes, long enough for the front window crowd to thin and for the kitchen staff to stop pretending not to stare.

“I can put people on the door,” he said.

“We have a door.”

“We have a threat.”

She looked at the cracked tile. “I’m not moving in with armed strangers because someone threw a brick.”

His jaw shifted. “Then don’t. Let me protect the restaurant.”

“Protect it from who?”

He didn’t answer right away.

That was answer enough.

By three, the video had been clipped, captioned, reposted, and turned into a joke by people who had never seen her do a double shift. The worst version said: boss’s mystery waitress gets claimed in front of his fiancée. Tyler’s voice was all over it, and her face was frozen in the middle of the room like she’d been pulled apart for entertainment.

Vincent watched the clip once, thumb still on his phone. “This goes wider if we let them steer it.”

Emily gave him a flat look. “You gonna give an interview?”

“I already did.”

He slid the phone over.

The camera had caught him from the chest up, no smile, no games. “Emily Bennett works two jobs and sends money home,” he said. “The man who mocked her is a coward. Anyone who thinks that was funny can come say it to my face.”

The clip ended.

Emily stared at the black screen. “You said my last name.”

“I asked before I posted it.”

That should have mattered less than it did. It didn’t.

Her phone buzzed in her apron pocket. Unknown number.

Stay away from DeLuca if you want your mother safe.

Her throat went tight. She turned the screen toward Vincent.

He read it once, then again. Marcus was already beside him before she spoke.

“Who has my address?” she said.

Vincent looked at the message, then at her. “Someone who knows where you live. Pack a bag.”

“I am not—”

“Emily.”

He said her name like a hand on the elbow, not a shove.

And for the first time all day, she didn’t know which scared her more: the warning, or how fast he was already moving to answer it.