"Dammit Cisco, I told you—just the corner booth. That's it."
Elena wiped down the bar counter for the third time in ten minutes, her jaw tight. She'd been running Rosie's Diner for eight years since her mom passed, and she knew trouble when it walked through her door. Today it had walked in wearing a cheap suit and a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Come on, Elena. It's just poker. Harmless fun between friends." Cisco Rodriguez adjusted his tie and slid onto a barstool. "Nobody's gonna get hurt."
"That's what you said about the cigarette thing."
"Hey, that worked out fine."
"You had people smoking in my kitchen, Cisco. The health inspector nearly shut me down."
But even as she argued, Elena found herself considering it. Business had been slow—real slow. The new highway bypass meant fewer truckers stopped by, and the fancy coffee place downtown was stealing her morning crowd. A little extra cash from letting Cisco run his card games wouldn't hurt.
"Look," Cisco leaned forward, lowering his voice. "I'm talking about Thursday nights only. After ten PM when you're usually dead anyway. Clean, quiet game. High-class clientele."
Elena snorted. "High-class? Like Benny Torrino is high-class?"
"Benny's changed. He's got a real job now at the auto parts store."
"That lasted two weeks."
"Okay, so maybe Benny's still figuring things out. But the others—Tommy Chen, that new guy Vernon, couple of the construction workers from the Millfield project—they got money to spend."
Elena poured herself a coffee and took a sip. The bitter taste matched her mood. Three months behind on the mortgage. The freezer making that sound again. Her brother asking when she could pay him back the two grand he'd loaned her last Christmas.
"Just the corner booth," she said finally. "And I keep the lights low so nobody driving by can see what's going on."
Cisco's grin widened. "You're gonna love this, Elena. Easy money."
That was six weeks ago.
Now Elena stood in her ruined diner, staring at the overturned tables, the broken coffee machine, the spray-painted words across her front window. The smell of smoke still hung in the air from where someone had tried to torch the place—and probably would have succeeded if Mrs. Patterson next door hadn't called the fire department.
The corner booth poker game had become three tables by week two. By week four, they were running numbers and taking bets on high school football games. Last Thursday night, Cisco had shown up with two guys Elena didn't recognize—guys with neck tattoos and the kind of eyes that made smart people cross the street.
"We had a deal," she'd told him.
"This is still the deal. Just—bigger."
"Get out."
"Elena, be reasonable."
"I said get out."
But Cisco hadn't gotten out. Instead, he'd laughed and told her she was getting ten percent whether she liked it or not. Told her she was in too deep now to complain. Told her she should be grateful.
Elena had grabbed the baseball bat she kept behind the register—the one her dad had used in high school—and pointed it at the door.
"You got five seconds."
The two strangers had reached inside their jackets, but Cisco had waved them off. "Relax, guys. Elena's just having a bad day."
They'd left, but not before Cisco turned back at the door. "You know what they say about giving someone an inch, right? Sometimes they take the whole mile whether you want them to or not."
The next morning, Elena had found her diner looking like a war zone.
She picked up an overturned chair and set it upright. Then another. The insurance adjuster would be here in an hour, and after that, probably the police. Again.
Her phone buzzed. A text from her landlord asking about next month's rent.
Elena deleted it without responding and kept cleaning up the mess. She had work to do.
Outside, a truck pulled into the parking lot—one of her regular customers, probably. Elena smoothed down her hair and walked to the door, flipping the sign from "Closed" to "Open."
Because that's what you did. You cleaned up the mess, you opened the door, and you tried again.
