His Mafia Queen

Red Flags

RILEY

"Here, Riley, finish up the last and we'll get a new bottle." One of the editors, a guy named Kyle, smiles, jolting me out of my shock at seeing Gabriel here.

Kyle pours the last of the bottle into my glass, and I murmur a thanks. I sip at the wine, hoping no one noticed that I stared at Gabriel as he walked past our table. As if I wasn't nervous enough, being here in this nice restaurant with my bosses. Now I feel the weight of Gabriel's presence, and it's making me jittery.

I take a small sip of my wine, mindful of not getting tipsy.

"Riley, how are you liking living in Florida? You're from Boston, right?" Kyle, who is sitting next to me, angles his body so he's facing me in the booth.

I do the same, glad to focus on something other than Gabriel. "Was it the accent that made you guess I was from Boston?"

"Guilty." Kyle laughs. He's the youngest of all the corporate newspaper managers at the table. Geeky, with dark brown hair, blue eyes and a reasonably muscular build. He's probably around Gabriel's age, early thirties, which puts him around ten years older than me.

For a guy who works at a news organization, he's hot. Compared to Gabriel? Meh.

"I like Florida okay. It's a lot different than Boston. But I'm getting used to it. The place can be..." my voice trails off. This place can be corrupt, weird, scary. "...a little too warm, even in the winter. I almost miss the snow."

"I don't think I've ever heard of anyone who misses the snow. Tell me, Riley, do you have any interest in coming to work at our paper in New York?"

My heart skips a beat. Is this really happening?

"Well, of course." I say the words before I consider them.

"Do you know what I do at corporate?" he asks.

I take a larger sip of my wine so I can stall. When I'd arrived at the restaurant tonight I'd sat in the parking lot in my car, looking at all of the bios of the executives so I could make small talk. "Of course I do. You're in charge of business news."

It's not a topic I'm remotely interested in, but who knows where Kyle will be in management in a year or two. The words that my journalism professors taught me echo through my head: be nice to everyone on the way up, because you never know who you'll meet later.

"That's correct. We're going to be launching a new product, a targeted business newsletter that will go directly to readers..."

Kyle drones on about personal finance stories, how this newsletter will be aimed at Gen Z, how he's going to be looking to hire new staff in the third quarter of this year. I nod, pretending I'm interested. Even though I'm not. I've gotten a taste of crime writing, and that's what I want to do.

"Do you think you'd like living in New York?" Kyle asks.

I open and close my mouth a few times. "I went to school there, so I'm pretty familiar with it."

"Of course, of course. I saw that in your personnel file."

I raise an eyebrow. "You looked in my file?"

"Guilty again. I wanted to see who we were having dinner with, who the star reporters at the Tribune were."

"Funny, I don't consider myself a star." I blurt that out. Crap. I shouldn't have said that, and maybe the wine is getting to me.

"Oh, I beg to differ. I read your story about that city council guy who went missing and then died. That was excellent."

A surge of pride hits me. "Thanks. I enjoy writing about organized crime."