Chapter 3 - The Broken Screen
For three agonizing seconds, neither of them moved.
The only sound in the second-floor hallway was the distant hum of a refrigerator buzzing from inside apartment 2B, and the faint, rhythmic wheeze of a small child coughing softly through the open bedroom door.
Jenny’s knees buckled slightly. She reached out, gripping the wooden doorframe to steady herself, her eyes filling with hot, exhausted tears that finally overflowed.
“I... I don't understand,” she whispered, her voice trembling so violently she could barely form the words. “Why are you doing this? I don't know you. You paid my rent. You bought his medicine. Who sent you? Is it social services? Did my landlord call someone?”
Marco didn't answer right away. He stepped across the threshold, entering the small, cramped apartment without waiting for an invitation.
The air inside smelled of stale tea, damp laundry, and vaporized eucalyptus oil. A single overhead bulb cast a harsh yellow glow over a sagging sofa, a stack of school books neatly arranged on a plastic crate, and a worn kitchen table where a half-eaten loaf of white bread sat under a napkin.
It was a home built entirely out of sacrifice.
Marco placed the paper bag and the cracked iPhone gently on the kitchen table.
“No one sent me,” Marco said, his voice dropping into a register so gentle it shocked even him. “I was at the pawn shop when you sold the phone. I saw what you wrote on the slip.”
Jenny flinched. Shame washed over her face, turning her pale skin a hot, burning crimson. She wiped her eyes angrily with the sleeve of her navy coat.
“I didn't have a choice,” she spat out, her defensive pride flaring up like a struck match. “I had thirty-four dollars in my bank account, rent was due, and Leo’s last inhaler ran out during recess yesterday. What would you have done? Let him choke?”
“No,” Marco said evenly. “I wouldn't have.”
He walked past her toward the narrow hallway leading to the back bedroom.
“Hey! Stay away from him!” Jenny cried out, lunging forward to block his path, her hands pushing against his chest with whatever strength she had left.
Marco didn't budge an inch. He let her push, standing like a stone wall, but his eyes were entirely devoid of threat.
“I’m not going to hurt him, Jenny,” Marco said, using her first name for the first time. It sounded strange on his tongue—soft, human, completely foreign to a man who usually only uttered names when signing death warrants or closing corporate takeovers. “I brought three refills. The pharmacist said he needs to start one right away.”
Jenny stopped pushing. Her hands slid down the front of his expensive coat, her fingers trembling against the dark wool. The fight drained out of her all at once, leaving her standing there like a broken doll.
“He’s only eight,” she whispered into the empty air, her voice cracking into a sob. “He’s so little. And every time the weather changes... every time the dust gets bad in this building... his chest just closes up. And I look at him, and I realize I can’t protect him. I can’t even buy him a fifty-dollar piece of plastic and medicine.”
She covered her face with her hands, finally letting go of the iron wall she had built around herself.
Marco didn't offer empty platitudes. Men in his world didn't give hope; they gave solutions.
He walked past her into the small bedroom.
Inside, illuminated by a flickering nightlight shaped like a dinosaur, a little boy lay curled under a faded blue quilt. His chest heaved with a terrifying, whistling sound, his skin pale, his brown hair matted with sweat against the pillow.
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Marco’s heart hammered against his ribs—a sharp, painful reminder of a kitchen in Chicago twenty-two years ago.
He opened the brown paper bag, pulled out the plastic inhaler, and stepped over to the bed.
