Chapter 2 - The Second-Floor Landing
Jenny Reeves stood in the doorway of apartment 2B, her shoulders hunched as if she were carrying the weight of the sky.
Her navy coat was still buttoned wrong. Her face was pale, drawn tight with exhaustion, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears that she was fighting tooth and nail to keep back.
In front of her stood Arthur Vance, the building’s slumlord—a thick, sweating man with a cheap gold chain around his neck and a sneer permanently etched into his thick lips. Vance held a clipboard in one hand and tapped a set of heavy brass keys against his thigh with the other.
“Mr. Vance, please,” Jenny whispered, her voice cracking. “I had to pay for Leo’s medication. It was an emergency. I sold my phone just to get the first one. I’ll have the rest by Friday. I swear to God, just give me until Friday.”
“Friday?” Vance let out a harsh, barking laugh. “Sweetheart, everybody wants to pay me on Friday. But my mortgage is due today. The city taxes are due today. If you can’t afford the roof over your head, maybe you and your little whelp should find a nice bridge to sleep under.”
“He’s sick,” Jenny choked out, her voice dropping to a desperate, broken plea. “He’s sleeping inside right now with a tight chest. If you put us out tonight, he won’t survive the cold.”
“That’s a you problem,” Vance scoffed, stepping closer and raising his hand to push past her into the apartment. “Move aside. I’m starting with the mattress.”
He didn't get the chance.
A heavy, gloved hand clamped down on Arthur Vance’s shoulder from behind.
It wasn't a hard grip—not yet—but it carried a weight so absolute, so unnatural in a hallway like that, that Vance froze instantly. The keys stopped jingling against his leg.
“Turn around,” a voice murmured. Low. Calm. Dead.
Vance blinked, his face flushing red with sudden, blustery indignation as he tried to shrug the hand off. “What the hell do you want? Who are you? This is a private matter—”
Vance turned his head.
And the words died in his throat.
Arthur Vance knew men. He dealt with deadbeats, junkies, and desperate tenants every single day. He knew how to bully the weak. But as he looked up into Marco Vitelli’s pale, colorless eyes, every instinct in his body screamed that he had just made the mistake of his life.
Marco stood a head taller than him, clad in an immaculate charcoal overcoat, his face carved from ice. He didn't look angry. He looked like an executioner who had accidentally wandered into the wrong room and decided to finish a job anyway.
“You were saying?” Marco asked softly.
Vance swallowed hard, his knees suddenly feeling like water. “I... I was just discussing the lease terms with Mrs. Reeves here. It’s a business matter. Who are you? Her lawyer?”
“I’m the neighbor,” Marco lied smoothly. He released Vance’s shoulder, stepped past him, and looked down at Jenny, who was staring at him with a mixture of terror and utter bewilderment.
Marco reached into his overcoat, pulled out a thick wad of crisp, banded hundred-dollar bills—easily three thousand dollars—and held it out toward the trembling slumlord.
Vance’s eyes bulged. “Is that...?”
“That’s three months rent for apartment 2B,” Marco said, his gaze never leaving Vance’s face. “Paid in full. In cash. With a zero-balance receipt delivered to my car by tomorrow morning.”
Vance snatched the money from Marco’s hand so fast his fingers practically blurred. A greedy, oily smile spread across his face. “Well, now! That changes things! Business is business, right, pal? No hard feelings, Mrs. Reeves. Just keeping the books balanced!”
“Get out,” Marco said.
The two words dropped like lead weights on the floorboards.
Vance didn't argue. He turned on his heel, tucked the cash into his jacket pocket, and practically threw himself down the stairs, his heavy footsteps echoing frantically until the front door slammed below.
Silence rushed back into the hallway.
Jenny stood frozen in the doorway, staring at Marco as if he were a ghost. Her breath came in short, shaky hitches.
“Who... who are you?” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. “I don't have any money to pay you back. I sold my phone just to get—”
Marco interrupted her by lifting the brown paper bag and the cracked iPhone, holding them out toward her like an offering.
May you like
“You left your phone at the pawn shop on Grover Street,” Marco said quietly. “And your son left his medicine.”
Jenny staggered back a half-step, her eyes widening in sheer disbelief as she looked from the phone to the pharmacy bag, and then back to the dangerous, immaculately dressed stranger standing in her dim, peeling hallway.
