The Waitress Did One Brave Thing—Then the Mafia Boss Whispered, “You Just Earned My Respect”

Part 2
I hurried away from the corner table with my pulse hammering so violently I could feel it in my throat.

Table 9 did not need their check.

The couple seated there were still halfway through dessert, the woman laughing softly as she dipped her spoon into tiramisu. Marco had invented an excuse to drag me away, and for once, I was grateful for his cruelty.

My hands shook as I reached the service station and pretended to sort receipts. Behind me, I could feel the weight of the room slowly returning to normal. Forks touched plates again. Conversations resumed in hushed tones. But nothing truly went back to normal after Antonio Russo walked through a door.

Not in Bellarosa.

Not in Brooklyn.

Not anywhere, if the stories were true.

“Sophie.”

Marco’s voice hissed beside my ear.

I turned.

His face was tight with anger, but beneath it was fear. Real fear. The kind that made his skin look waxy under the golden restaurant lights.

“What did you say to her?” he demanded.

“To who?”

His nostrils flared. “Do not play stupid with me. Mrs. Russo.”

“I helped her take her medicine.”

“You sat down with her.”

“She asked me to.”

“You do not sit with customers.”

“She was alone and—”

“She is not a customer,” Marco snapped, leaning closer. “She is Maria Russo. Do you understand what that means?”

I swallowed.

Everyone in Brooklyn understood what that meant, even if no one said it out loud. The Russo name did not need explaining. It lived in lowered voices, in closed curtains, in cash businesses that never failed, in men who crossed themselves before answering the phone.

“I didn’t know who she was,” I whispered.

“That makes it worse.”

Before I could respond, Antonio’s voice floated across the room, calm and steady.

“Marco.”

The head waiter froze.

It was astonishing, how one word could erase a man’s authority.

Marco turned slowly, smoothing his vest with nervous hands. Antonio was seated now across from his mother, one arm resting along the back of his chair, the very picture of ease. But his eyes were fixed on us.

“Bring Sophie here.”

My stomach dropped.

Marco’s jaw tightened. He looked at me as if I had personally dragged him into a grave.

“Go,” he muttered.

Every step back to the corner table felt too loud. I could sense people watching without looking at me directly. That was how power worked in rooms like this. It changed where eyes were allowed to land.

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Antonio did not rise when I approached, but somehow I felt as though I had entered his office, his house, his territory.

“Yes, Mr. Russo?” I asked.

His mother smiled at me as if nothing unusual was happening.

“Mama tells me you are studying nursing,” Antonio said.

“I was.”

“Was?”

I clasped my hands in front of my apron to keep them still. “I had to stop for a while.”

Maria’s expression softened, but Antonio’s remained unreadable.

“Why?”

The question was simple. Too simple. People with money asked that question as if life were a hallway and hardship merely a door one could choose not to open.

I forced a polite smile. “Personal reasons.”

His dark eyes did not move. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I have while I’m working.”

For one terrifying second, the air seemed to sharpen.

Then Maria chuckled.

Antonio looked at his mother, and something almost human passed through his face.

“She has spirit,” Maria said.

“Yes,” Antonio murmured. “I noticed.”

Heat climbed my neck.

“I should return to my tables,” I said carefully.

Antonio reached into his jacket again and removed a folded card. Not cash. A card. Cream-colored, thick, embossed with a single letter R in black.

He placed it on the table.

“My mother will need assistance this evening when she leaves. You will help her to the car.”

It was not a question.

Marco appeared behind me so quickly I wondered if he had been listening from three feet away.

“Of course,” he said, voice trembling with eagerness. “I can personally—”

Antonio lifted his eyes.

Marco stopped speaking.

“Sophie will help her,” Antonio said.

The card remained on the table between us.

I looked at it, then at him. “I finish my shift at ten.”

“Then my mother will leave at ten.”

A silence settled.

Maria patted my hand. “Do not worry, cara. I will not keep you long.”

I nodded because there seemed to be no other acceptable response.

For the next hour, I worked as if walking through a dream. Plates moved through my hands. Wine was poured. Orders were taken. Customers complained, complimented, laughed, demanded. But every few minutes my eyes drifted toward the corner table.

Antonio and his mother spoke softly in Italian. His men sat nearby but never ate. One faced the entrance. The other watched the kitchen doors. Antonio’s meal arrived, but he barely touched it. Maria ate slowly, occasionally glancing at me with fondness that made my chest ache for reasons I did not want to examine.

At nine forty-five, Marco cornered me near the dish station.

“You will not embarrass this establishment,” he said.

I was too exhausted to be intimidated. “I helped an old woman.”

“You attracted attention.”

“No, Marco. You’re just angry because for once it wasn’t on you.”

His eyes narrowed. “Careful.”

The word should have frightened me. It would have, any other night.

But something had shifted inside me. Maybe it was fatigue. Maybe it was Maria’s warm hand over mine. Maybe it was the way Antonio Russo, a man everyone feared, had looked at me as if I were not invisible.

At exactly ten, Maria rose from her chair.

Antonio stood immediately and offered his arm, but she waved him off.

“No, no. Sophie promised.”

“I did not promise,” I said before I could stop myself.

Maria smiled. “But you will.”

Antonio’s mouth twitched, barely.

I untied my apron, folded it, and placed it near the service station. Marco watched with his arms crossed. I ignored him.

Maria was lighter than she looked when she took my arm. Her hand rested delicately against my sleeve, but there was strength in her grip. Close up, I noticed the faint blue veins beneath her skin, the careful makeup that could not entirely conceal exhaustion, and the scent of rosewater clinging to her.

“You work too much,” she said as we moved toward the door.

I gave a small laugh. “That obvious?”

“To women who have worked too much, yes.”

Antonio walked just behind us. His presence filled the space at my back. I could hear the soft click of his shoes against the floor, steady and unhurried.

Outside, the October air struck cool against my face. A black car waited at the curb, engine purring. The streetlights painted the wet pavement gold from an earlier rain.

I helped Maria down the single step.

“Thank you, Sophie,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

She held my hand a moment longer than necessary. “Do not let hard years convince you that you are small.”

The words landed somewhere deep and unguarded.

Before I could answer, a sound cracked through the night.

Not a car backfiring.

Not a bottle breaking.

A gunshot.

The driver jerked violently, slumping forward against the steering wheel. The horn blared, long and awful.

Everything happened at once.

Antonio’s men shouted. One grabbed Maria. Another drew a weapon from under his jacket. A second shot shattered the restaurant window behind us, spraying glass across the sidewalk.

Maria screamed.

I did not think.

I moved.

I shoved Maria down behind the open car door and threw my body over hers as glass rained across my back. Pain sliced across my shoulder, hot and immediate, but I barely felt it. The world narrowed to Maria’s terrified breathing beneath me and Antonio’s voice cutting through the chaos.

“Down!”

More shots.

A woman inside the restaurant shrieked. Tires screamed at the end of the block. One of Antonio’s men fired twice into the darkness. The black car rocked as someone slammed into it.

Maria’s hands clutched my uniform.

“Sophie,” she gasped.

“I’ve got you,” I said, though my own voice shook. “Stay down.”

Then I saw it.

A small red dot trembling on the side of Maria’s coat.

I did not understand at first. It was too precise, too unnatural. Then my mind caught up.

Laser sight.

My breath stopped.

I grabbed Maria by both shoulders and yanked her sideways with everything I had.

The bullet hit the car window where her head had been.

The glass exploded inward.

Someone shouted my name.

Antonio.

Not “waitress.” Not “girl.”

Sophie.

Strong hands seized me and pulled me back. Antonio crouched beside us, his face no longer unreadable. It was something else entirely now—cold, focused, lethal.

“Are you hit?” he demanded.

“No.”

Then I looked down.

Blood soaked the sleeve of my white blouse.

Maybe I was.

Antonio saw it at the same time. His jaw tightened.

“Mama?”

Maria was trembling but alive. “I am all right.”

Another car roared up to the curb. Doors opened. Men spilled out, armed and alert. Antonio lifted his mother as if she weighed nothing and guided her into the second vehicle.

Then he turned to me.

“You come with us.”

“I need—”

“You come with us,” he repeated.

It was not fear in his voice. It was command.

I should have argued. I should have run back into Bellarosa, called the police, pressed a towel to my bleeding arm, gone home, locked my door, and prayed this night disappeared by morning.

Instead, my knees buckled.

Antonio caught me before I hit the pavement.

For one dizzy second, my cheek pressed against his suit jacket. Beneath the cologne, I smelled smoke. Gunpowder. Rain.

“You just earned my respect,” he whispered.

Then the city blurred.

When I opened my eyes, I was not in a hospital.

That was the first thing I noticed.

The ceiling above me was painted cream and trimmed with dark wood. A chandelier hung overhead, glittering softly. I lay on a leather sofa in a room larger than my entire apartment. A fire burned in a marble fireplace. Heavy curtains covered tall windows.

My shoulder throbbed.

I tried to sit up.

“Easy.”

Antonio stood near the fireplace, jacket removed, sleeves rolled to his forearms. A glass of amber liquor sat untouched on the mantel.

I jolted upright anyway, instantly regretting it as pain tore through me.

“Where am I?”

“My home.”

That did nothing to calm me.

“Why am I in your home?”

“You refused the hospital while unconscious.”

“I was unconscious. I couldn’t refuse anything.”

His eyes moved over my face. “You mumbled something about bills.”

My mouth closed.

A man entered carrying a black medical bag. He was older, with gray hair and tired eyes. Not one of Antonio’s soldiers. A doctor, perhaps, though not the kind who asked for insurance cards.

“She’s awake,” Antonio said.

“I can see that,” the man replied dryly.

He examined my shoulder with brisk professionalism. The bullet had not hit me. A long shard of glass had sliced through the skin above my upper arm and shoulder. Deep enough to require stitches. Not deep enough, he said, to make a tragedy out of it.

I almost laughed.

A shooting outside a restaurant, a mafia boss’s mother, a private doctor in a mansion, and apparently this was not yet a tragedy.

The doctor stitched me while Antonio watched from across the room.

“Does he have to stay?” I asked through clenched teeth.

The doctor glanced at Antonio.

Antonio did not move.

“Apparently,” the doctor said.

I stared at the ceiling while the needle passed through my skin again and again. I refused to make a sound.

When it was over, the doctor wrapped my shoulder and gave instructions about keeping the wound clean. Antonio listened more carefully than I did.

Then the doctor left.

Silence settled.

I stood too quickly. “I need to go home.”

“No.”

The word was immediate.

I turned on him. “You don’t get to say no.”

“For tonight, I do.”

My fear burned into anger. “I saved your mother. That doesn’t make me your prisoner.”

His face hardened. “Someone tried to kill my mother tonight. You were seen protecting her. Until I know who ordered it, you are not safe.”

“I’m nobody.”

“No.” His gaze sharpened. “That is why you are dangerous to them.”

I frowned. “That makes no sense.”

“It will.”

He moved to a side table and picked up the cream-colored card he had given me earlier. I had forgotten it completely. Somehow it had survived the chaos, tucked into my coat pocket.

“You made a choice tonight,” he said. “Most people freeze. Most run. You moved toward danger.”

“I moved toward an old woman.”

“My mother.”

“An old woman,” I repeated.

Something flickered in his eyes.

Then the door opened and Maria entered.

She wore a dark robe now, her silver hair loosened around her face. Without the restaurant lights and pearls, she looked older, smaller, yet somehow more formidable.

Antonio stepped toward her. “You should be resting.”

“I have rested enough in my life.” She looked at me. “Sophie, forgive my son. He gives orders when he is afraid.”

“I am not afraid,” Antonio said.

Maria ignored him. “Men like him confuse fear with strategy.”

For the first time that night, I almost smiled.

Maria came to me and touched my uninjured arm.

“You saved my life.”

I looked away. “Anyone would have.”

“No,” Antonio said.

The room went still.

He said it quietly, without drama, and that made it impossible to dismiss.

Maria studied me with those warm brown eyes. “There are debts that cannot be paid with money.”

“I don’t want money,” I said quickly.

Antonio’s mouth curved faintly. “You keep refusing things from me.”

“Maybe you keep offering the wrong things.”

I regretted the words instantly.

But Maria laughed, soft and delighted.

Antonio looked at me as if trying to decide whether to be offended or amused. “Then what is the right thing?”

“My life back,” I said. “My shift was supposed to end. I was supposed to go home, sleep for four hours, and work breakfast at the diner. I don’t want protection. I don’t want attention. I don’t want whatever this is.”

Antonio studied me for a long moment.

Then he said, “Your apartment is being watched.”

My blood chilled.

“What?”

“One of my men checked after the shooting. There was a car outside your building. No plates. Two men inside. They left when approached.”

The room tilted slightly.

“That’s impossible.”

“It is inconvenient,” Antonio said, “not impossible.”

I sank back onto the sofa.

Maria’s expression hardened in a way that reminded me she was not merely a sweet old woman in pearls. She had raised Antonio Russo. She had survived long enough to sit at his table.

“Who?” she asked him.

“We are finding out.”

“Find faster.”

Antonio nodded once.

The tenderness between them was strange. It lived beneath commands, beneath old habits, beneath a language of danger I did not understand.

I wrapped my arms around myself. “Why would anyone care about me?”

“Because you saw enough,” Antonio said.

“I saw nothing.”

“You saw that my driver was hit first. You saw the second angle. You saw the laser on my mother. You reacted before my own men did.”

His voice did not rise, but the last sentence struck the room like a slap.

I remembered the red dot.

My stomach turned.

“There were two shooters,” I whispered.

Antonio’s eyes locked onto mine.

Maria crossed herself.

I looked between them. “That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“That means it was planned well,” Antonio said. “And planned by someone who knows our habits.”

A heavy knock sounded.

One of Antonio’s men entered. He was younger than I expected, perhaps thirty, with close-cropped hair and a bruise forming along his jaw.

“Boss.”

Antonio turned.

The man glanced at me, hesitating.

“Speak,” Antonio said.

“We found the first car abandoned near Flushing. Burned. Driver gone. Plates were stolen from Jersey.”

“And the shooter?”

“No body. Blood trail for half a block, then nothing.”

Antonio’s face revealed nothing.

The man hesitated again. “There’s more.”

Maria’s hand tightened around mine.

Antonio’s voice lowered. “Say it.”

“We pulled footage from across Bellarosa. Street cameras, deli next door, ATM across the block.” The man swallowed. “The hit wasn’t aimed at Mrs. Russo.”

Antonio went completely still.

I felt the room change.

Even the fire seemed quieter.

The man looked at me.

“It was aimed at her.”

At first, I did not understand.

Then I did, and the breath left my body.

“No,” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”

Antonio did not look at me. His eyes remained on his man.

“Explain.”

“The first shot killed the driver to block the car. The second shattered the window to cause panic. The third line of sight was on Mrs. Russo after Sophie moved her. But before that…” He paused. “The first laser was on Sophie’s back when she stepped outside.”

My skin went cold.

Maria whispered something in Italian.

Antonio crossed the room so fast I barely saw him move. He took the tablet from the man’s hand and watched whatever footage played there.

His expression did not change.

That frightened me more than anger would have.

He watched it once.

Twice.

Then he lifted his eyes to me.

“You were not in the wrong place,” he said. “You were the reason they came.”

I stood, ignoring the pain that flared through my shoulder. “I don’t know anyone. I don’t have enemies. I serve coffee in the morning and pasta at night. I barely have clean laundry.”

Antonio handed the tablet back.

“Everyone has enemies. Some are inherited.”

The words struck with strange force.

Inherited.

My grandmother’s face rose in my mind. Her soft gray curls. Her hospital bed. Her hands, thin and warm, clutching mine as she drifted in and out near the end.

She had raised me after my mother died. She had told me very little about the past. Only that some doors should remain closed because opening them did not change what was behind them.

My throat tightened.

Maria noticed.

“What is it, cara?”

“Nothing.”

Antonio’s eyes narrowed. “That is the second time you have used that lie tonight.”

I wanted to snap at him, but the room felt suddenly too full of ghosts.

“My grandmother used to say something like that,” I admitted. “About enemies being passed down. I thought she was just being dramatic.”

“What was her name?” Maria asked.

“Evelyn Carter.”

No one moved.

The silence that followed was different from all the others. Not fearful. Not tense.

Recognizing.

Maria’s hand slipped from mine.

Antonio stared at me as if I had become someone else.

“What?” I asked.

Maria’s face had gone pale.

“Your grandmother,” she said carefully. “Was her name Evelyn Carter before marriage?”

I frowned. “No. That was after. Her maiden name was Bellini.”

The glass on the mantel cracked.

Antonio had gripped it too hard. Amber liquor spilled over his fingers, dripping onto the floor.

Maria whispered, “Dio mio.”

I took a step back. “What is going on?”

Antonio set the broken glass down slowly.

“Evelyn Bellini died thirty years ago,” he said.

My voice came out thin. “No. She died last winter.”

“No,” Maria said, eyes shining with something that looked painfully close to grief. “The world believed she died thirty years ago.”

My heart pounded against my ribs.

“You knew her?”

Maria looked at Antonio.

He did not speak.

So she did.

“She was my sister.”

The words did not enter me all at once. They circled the room first, impossible and absurd, before finding their way into my chest.

“That’s not true.”

Maria’s eyes filled. “She had a small scar under her chin from falling out of a fig tree when she was nine. She sang when she cooked. She hated lilies because they reminded her of funerals. And when she was frightened, she twisted her wedding ring, even after her husband died.”

My knees weakened.

I had seen my grandmother do that a thousand times.

“You’re lying,” I whispered, but there was no strength in it.

Antonio’s face was carved from shadow. “You are family.”

“No.”

The word came out instinctively.

Family meant birthdays and soup when you were sick. Family meant someone waiting up when your bus was late. Family meant my grandmother’s tired smile as she pretended the medicine was working.

It did not mean guns in the street and men with dead eyes guarding doors.

Maria reached for me, but I stepped back.

“No,” I repeated. “My grandmother had no family. She told me they were gone.”

Maria flinched.

“In a way,” she said, “we were.”

Antonio’s voice was quieter now. “Your grandmother disappeared before a war between families. Her father had promised her in marriage to a man she despised. She ran. The official story was that she died in a fire.”

My thoughts spun. “Why would she never tell me?”

“To keep you out,” Maria said. “To keep you clean.”

I almost laughed at that. Clean. As if poverty were clean. As if grief were clean. As if working until your body broke was clean simply because no one had shot at you yet.

Antonio stepped closer.

“The men tonight may have discovered who you are.”

“But I’m no one.”

His eyes burned into mine.

“You are the last living granddaughter of Salvatore Bellini.”

The name meant nothing to me.

But it meant everything to the room.

The young man near the door lowered his gaze.

Maria sank into a chair.

Antonio looked as though a map had rearranged itself in his mind.

“Who was he?” I asked.

Maria answered, but her voice seemed far away.

“My father. Your great-grandfather. Once, before the Russos ruled Brooklyn, the Bellinis did.”

A cold understanding crept over me.

I had not stumbled into Antonio Russo’s world.

I had been born on the edge of it.

And someone had finally noticed.

Antonio turned to his man. “Lock down the house. No one enters. No one leaves without my permission.”

“Yes, boss.”

The man vanished.

I shook my head. “I need air.”

“No.”

I glared at him. “Stop saying that.”

His expression sharpened. “Stop trying to walk into danger.”

“Danger followed me here.”

“Because of blood.”

“Because of your blood,” I shot back.

For a moment, he said nothing.

Then he stepped close enough that I had to tilt my head to meet his eyes.

“You think I do not know that?”

The anger in his voice was not loud. It was worse. It was contained, disciplined, burning behind iron bars.

“My mother almost died tonight. You were nearly killed. My enemies are moving pieces I did not know were still on the board. So yes, Sophie Bellini Carter, danger followed you here. But it was waiting long before I walked into that restaurant.”

My grandmother’s name and mine tangled together in the air.

Sophie Bellini Carter.

A stranger wearing my face.

Maria rose slowly. “Antonio.”

He looked away first.

That small surrender unsettled me.

Maria came toward me again, more carefully this time.

“I lost my sister once,” she said. “I will not lose what remains of her because we are too proud to tell the truth.”

“What truth?”

She looked toward the fireplace, where the flames bent and twisted.

“The night Evelyn vanished, she did not run alone.”

Antonio’s jaw tightened.

Maria continued. “She took something with her. Something my father had hidden. A ledger. Names, payments, secrets. Enough to destroy every family in New York if opened in the wrong hands.”

I stared at her.

“My grandmother lived in a rent-controlled apartment and clipped coupons. She did not have some criminal ledger.”

“Maybe she got rid of it,” Maria said.

But Antonio was watching my face.

“What did she leave you?”

“Nothing,” I said.

He did not blink.

I looked away.

His voice softened, which somehow made it more dangerous. “Sophie.”

I thought of the small metal box under my bed. My grandmother’s box. The one she had told me not to open until I was ready to know why she had lied.

I had never opened it.

Not because I respected her wishes.

Because I was afraid.

My silence betrayed me.

Antonio saw everything.

“Where is it?” he asked.

I lifted my chin. “Somewhere safe.”

His eyes darkened. “Your apartment.”

My stomach dropped.

The car with no plates.

The men outside my building.

“No,” I whispered.

Antonio was already moving.

He grabbed his jacket from the chair and spoke toward the door.

“Luca!”

The young man appeared instantly.

“Take four men. Go to Sophie’s apartment. Quietly. Bring back anything hidden, locked, sealed, or old.”

I stepped in front of him. “You are not sending armed men into my home.”

He looked down at me.

“I am trying to keep you alive.”

“That box is mine.”

“If it is what I think it is, it belongs to everyone who died for it.”

“My grandmother died poor and scared,” I said, voice breaking despite my effort to stop it. “So don’t stand there in your mansion and talk to me about what belongs to the dead.”

For the first time, Antonio Russo looked struck.

Not wounded.

Not ashamed.

But struck, as if I had said something no one else would have dared say and survived.

Maria closed her eyes.

Antonio’s voice changed. “Then you come with us.”

“No,” Maria said sharply.

He turned. “Mama—”

“If they wanted her tonight, they may still be watching.”

“I will not leave this to chance.”

“You are not thinking as a boss. You are thinking as a man whose pride has been touched.”

Antonio’s face hardened.

Maria stepped closer to him, her frailness vanishing beneath the authority of a woman who had raised wolves and buried lambs.

“You said she earned your respect,” she said. “Then respect her.”

The room held its breath.

Antonio looked at me again.

“What is in the box?” he asked.

“I told you. I never opened it.”

“But you know where it is.”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me, and I will retrieve it personally.”

The idea of Antonio Russo standing in my tiny bedroom beside the thrift-store dresser and stack of unpaid bills was so strange that I almost laughed. But there was nothing funny in his eyes.

Before I could answer, a phone rang.

Not loud. Not dramatic.

Just one clean tone from inside Antonio’s jacket.

He answered.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then his face changed.

Every trace of humanity disappeared.

“What did you say?” he asked.

The voice on the other end was too faint for me to hear, but I saw Luca stiffen near the door. Maria pressed a hand to her chest.

Antonio’s gaze slowly moved to me.

My blood turned cold.

He ended the call.

“What happened?” I asked.

He did not answer immediately.

“Antonio,” Maria demanded.

He slipped the phone into his pocket.

“Your apartment is gone,” he said.

The room vanished beneath me.

“What?”

“Fire.”

I gripped the back of the sofa. “No.”

“My men arrived as the building went up. They got people out.”

“My neighbors?”

“Alive.”

Relief and horror collided inside me. “The box.”

Antonio’s silence answered.

I could see my grandmother’s face again, not sick this time, but younger in the old photograph I kept by my bed. Evelyn Bellini, who had escaped a family empire, buried her name, raised me in hiding, and left me one truth I had been too afraid to open.

Now it was ash.

I covered my mouth with a shaking hand.

Then Luca’s phone buzzed.

He glanced down, frowned, and looked at Antonio.

“Boss.”

Antonio turned.

Luca held out the screen. “This came from an unknown number.”

Antonio took the phone.

His eyes moved over the message.

Then he handed it to me.

My fingers trembled as I read the words.

The girl has the blood, but not the key. Tell Maria her sister should have stayed dead.

Beneath the message was a photograph.

Not of my apartment.

Not of the fire.

Of the metal box.

Open.

Empty.

Except for a folded piece of paper lying inside.

The paper bore my grandmother’s handwriting.

One line.

Sophie, trust no Russo.

I looked up slowly.

Maria was crying now.

Antonio stared at me with a darkness I could not read.

And somewhere beyond the locked doors of his mansion, someone who knew my grandmother’s secrets had just made the first move.

…If you want to know what happened next, please type “YES” and like for more.