CONTESSA DOESN’T UNDERSTAND EMPLOYMENT

The plan was simple.

Find a town—somewhere small but not suffocating, quiet but not isolated. Get a job, something low-maintenance, preferably with little social interaction. Settle into a routine. No grand schemes, no world-ending stakes. Just… existence.

It wasn’t wasn’t a difficult path. No calculated risks, no intricate manipulations. No gunfights or negotiations or bloody choices. Just one foot in front of the other, one simple action leading to another, and then another, and then—

She stopped in front of a diner.

The sign above the door read Maggie’s, its red paint slightly faded by the sun. The smell of sizzling bacon and burnt coffee drifted from inside, mingling with the scent of fresh rain on pavement. Through the window, she saw a waitress laughing with a customer, a cook flipping eggs on the griddle, a man at the counter reading a newspaper over a cup of coffee. Ordinary.

It was perfect.

She stepped inside. The door chimed. Heads turned, but only for a moment. She was just another stranger, another face passing through.

A woman behind the counter—Maggie, presumably—gave her a once-over. “You looking for something, hon?”

Contessa hesitated. She had expected—what, exactly? That the moment she walked in, her purpose here would become clear? That the logic of a normal life would fall into place as easily as any other plan?

She searched for the right words, the right approach. Then, simply:

“I’d like a job.”

Maggie raised an eyebrow. “You ever worked in a diner before?”

“No.”

“You good with people?”

“No.”

A pause. Then a slow nod. “Alright. You start tomorrow.”

She blinked. “…That’s it?”

Maggie smirked. “Hon, I’ve been short-staffed for three months. You could’ve walked in here wearing a ski mask, and I’d still have hired you.”

She handed over an apron.

For the first time in a long, long time, Contessa had no idea what came next.