"Get on your knees."
Derek Collins said it without raising his voice, as if he were asking somebody to move a chair. Then he caught Marcus Thompson by the collar of his faded work shirt and shoved him toward the tile floor of Soul Food Sanctuary.
Marcus, sixty-seven years old and carrying a pot of freshly washed utensils, caught himself against the edge of a table before his knees struck the ground. A fork clattered across the floor, and the three younger men with Derek laughed as though they had come to watch a performance.
"That's where you belong," Derek said. "You and this broken-down place should have disappeared years ago."
Marcus straightened slowly. He did not raise his hands, though something in his shoulders changed beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. Derek mistook the silence for submission and kicked over the cleaning bucket beside the counter. Gray water spread across the tiles, soaking the legs of two chairs and reaching the edge of the mat where Marcus stood every morning to serve breakfast.
"There," Derek said. "Another job for you. Maybe this time you'll learn who you're dealing with."
A man beside him lifted a phone. Another leaned against the door, watching the sidewalk in case somebody came in. Marcus's eyes moved from one face to the next, measuring distances and expressions with a precision that belonged to a former life. He could feel his own heartbeat, steady and unhurried. He had learned a long time ago that anger made the world smaller, and he needed to see everything in the room.
"You need to leave," Marcus said.
Derek smiled and turned toward the counter. The framed photograph beside the register showed Marcus's wife, Eleanor, wearing the blue dress she had loved and a wide-brimmed hat from the church where they had married. Derek picked up the frame before Marcus could move. For a moment he studied the smiling woman behind the glass, then spat directly onto the glass and hurled it against the wall.
The frame broke. Glass scattered beneath a table, and the photograph slipped face down among the pieces. Derek set a polished shoe over the broken wood and pressed until the last intact corner snapped. "You can't even protect a picture," he said. "What makes you think you can protect a business?"
Marcus did not look at Derek. He looked at the place where Eleanor's smile had disappeared, and something moved through him that was older than the diner and more painful than humiliation. His hand flexed once beside his leg. Then he bent carefully, collecting the photograph by its undamaged edges so the wet floor would not reach it.
"I'll be back," Derek said. "Next time, we'll talk about what happens to people who don't know when to go."