“But he cannot go to a public clinic,” Dante continued. “And my family vet is currently unavailable.”

“He will lose the leg if you do not keep up the treatments,” I told him, standing up and wiping my hands on a clean towel.

Dante stepped closer to me.

His shadow fell over my face, smelling of expensive tobacco, rain, and gasoline.

“You are coming with me,” he said.

“I have a shift,” I said, pointing toward the diner. “Felix is already short-handed, and I need this job.”

“Felix Crane is a coward who employs people who poison my horse,” Dante said.

He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a heavy leather checkbook.

He didn’t ask for my name; he just looked at my face, searching for something.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Mara,” I said.

He wrote quickly with a heavy silver pen, the nib scratching loudly against the paper.

He tore the check off and held it out to me.

I looked down at the numbers written in his sharp, elegant cursive.

It was fifty thousand dollars.