It was my second year undercover when my fiancée's childhood friend, Kerry Delgado, got himself dragged into a private room and beaten half to death. His arrogance had finally caught the wrong person's attention.
He looked straight at me, begging for help, telling them he knew me.
But I couldn't blow my cover. All I could do was stare back with the dead eyes of a man who didn't care.
That night, they destroyed one of his legs. My fiancée found me afterward and slapped me across the face.
“Why didn't you save him? If you'd just said you knew him, they would've let him go out of respect for you.”
The covert arrest operation was still active. I couldn't explain a thing.
I expected her to break up with me. Instead, she just let out a sigh and turned to leave.
“Forget it. I love you too much. But don't let it happen again.”
When the operation finally wrapped up, I made plans to take her out and tell her the truth.
That's when my mother's call came in：“Desmond Dickerson, please come save me.”
“Your fiancée took me to a restaurant for dinner, and the bill came to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then she disappeared, and the manager won't let me leave.”
——
By the time I got to the restaurant, my mother was sitting rigid in a chair, white-faced with terror.
The moment she saw me, relief flooded her eyes like I was the only thing between her and drowning.
“Desmond, you're here.”
She started to stand, but someone behind her shoved her back down by the shoulders.
“So this is your son? Good. Perfect timing.”
“Your mother ate at my restaurant, refused to pay, and then smashed an antique I acquired at auction for thirteen million dollars.”
The man's voice was ice. He spoke as though that piece of porcelain mattered more than the woman trembling in front of him.
I stepped closer and looked down at the shards scattered across the floor. My mother's guilt spilled out before I could speak.
“Desmond, I didn't break it on purpose. Fay Harding shoved me, and I lost my balance and……”
Her voice cracked into a quiet sob.
“Fay shoved you?”
Something cold coiled in my chest. A possibility I didn't want to name.
I didn't want it to be true. In my mind, Fay had always been reasonable, always understanding.
“Mom, don't be scared. If it was an accident, I'll pay for it.”
I pulled out my phone and called Fay. The line didn't connect.
The manager's patience had already run out. Each word he threw at me was sharper than the last.
“Kid, you've been on that phone for minutes now. You done yet?”
The second he finished, every employee in the restaurant closed in around us.
“Thirteen million and thirty thousand dollars. You're nobody. How exactly do you plan on paying me back?”
So that was why they'd surrounded us. They thought we'd run.
I lowered the phone and looked up at my mother.
“Mom, who ordered the food?”
“Your mother did, obviously.”
Someone answered before she could. The voice belonged to exactly the person I'd been trying to reach. Fay.
I turned toward the entrance. She stood in the doorway, one arm supporting Kerry, her expression completely blank.
“Your mother said she wanted to treat me to dinner. She handed me the menu and told me to order.”
“If you don't believe me, ask the staff. Check the security cameras.”
“That's right. This lady said she was treating the young miss to dinner, so the bill's on her. Nothing to do with anyone else.”
My mother's guilt deepened, her words tumbling out：“Desmond, it's true, I did invite Fay to eat.”
“You two were fighting over what happened with Kerry, so I asked her to tea so I could apologize.”
“But she said she wanted French cuisine and brought me here. I couldn't read a single thing on the menu. It was all in a foreign language.”
“So Fay ordered for me. The food, and bottle after bottle of wine.”
“I had no idea anything here cost that much. The wine alone was more than I could fathom.”
