Chapter 2 - The Watch in the Silverware Drawer
When Clara finally woke up, she was slumped awkwardly in the armchair facing the door, a stiff crick in her neck feeling like a rusty hinge. A half-empty mug of cold coffee sat on the floor beside her shoes.
Gray, miserable daylight filtered through the cheap plastic window blinds. It was 11:00 a.m.
The kitchen smelled sharply of industrial bleach. The linoleum was spotless. The only evidence that the dangerous stranger had ever occupied her apartment was his blood-soaked shirt balled up in the trash can and a heavy silver object resting innocently on the corner of the counter.
Clara picked it up. A Patek Philippe. Platinum. Heavy. It was probably worth more than the entire brick apartment building she lived in.
He must have unstrapped it while she was suturing his side and left it behind.
“Idiot,” she muttered.
She opened the silverware drawer and buried the watch deep beneath a pile of greasy Chinese takeout menus. She didn't want it. Keeping luxury items belonging to men who bled out on your floor at 3:00 a.m. was a fast ticket to an early grave. Clara already had enough problems; her rent was three weeks overdue, and her landlord, Henderson, had threatened to padlock the door by Friday.
She washed her face in rusty tap water, pulled a heavy canvas jacket over her sweater, and stepped out into the damp street.
The rain had stopped, leaving the city smelling of wet asphalt, coal smoke, and rotting garbage. Clara walked two blocks to S’s corner bodega to buy milk.
Something was deeply wrong.
The Narrows was normally a chaotic cacophony of shouting children, backfiring cars, and neighbors arguing from their concrete stoops. That morning, the stoops were completely empty. The corner boys who usually congregated beside the chain-link fences selling dime bags had vanished.
Clara pushed open the door of the bodega. The brass bell chimed into an eerie silence.
S, a heavyset man in his sixties who normally greeted her with a loud insult, stood behind the counter looking pale and sweaty as he frantically wiped the register glass with a dirty rag.
“Morning, S,” Clara said, walking toward the dairy cooler. “Quiet out there today.”
S flinched violently, dropping his rag. “Clara. Yeah. Quiet. Good day to stay inside.”
She brought a carton of milk to the counter and laid down a crumpled five-dollar bill. “Everything okay? You look like you saw a ghost.”
S leaned over the counter, his eyes darting toward the front window. “You didn't hear? The docks last night. An ambush. The Colombian cartel hit the Kaine Syndicate during a late-night sit-down.”
Clara felt a slow, cold thud in her chest.
The Kaine Syndicate ran the city. They owned the judges, the police precinct captains, the shipping yards, and every block in the Narrows.
“A gang war?” she kept her voice entirely neutral. “Doesn't affect us, S. We don't exist to them.”
“You don't get it,” S whispered, trembling. “They didn't just hit some low-level soldiers. They hit Victor Kaine himself. Word on the street is they tore him up bad with a machete. Nobody knows if he’s alive or dead. The whole city is locked down. Kaine’s private army is tearing apart every clinic, hospital, and back-alley doctor in the tri-state area looking for him. If he’s dead, God help this entire city.”
Clara grabbed her milk, turned on her heel, and walked out of the store without another word.
Victor Kaine.
May you like
The man with the cedarwood cologne. The man whose deep, ruthless eyes had stared into hers while she pulled thread through his torn flesh.
She had just stitched up the most dangerous mob boss in the country for one hundred dollars.
