“You let someone who lives,” I gestured incredulously with my hands. “Hereborrow money from us?”
“He… he got into the club, sir. Paid the seat money.”
I clenched my jaw, staring at the building as if willing it to implode. “You two really have a knack for finding the bottom of the barrel,” I muttered, more to myself than to them. “Get out.”
The three of us walked through the gaping doorway into the lobby, where the stink of mold and old piss clung to the peeling walls. My nose crinkled as I pressed the button to the elevator
Nothing.
I pressed it again. Still nothing. The doors remained stubbornly shut, and a faint metallic groan echoed from somewhere deep in the shaft.
I clenched my jaw. Fifth floor, and no elevator.
Gianni cleared his throat. “We… we’ll take the stairs, boss.”
“No shit,” I said, storming towards the stairway.
I walked up the stairs, my boots thudding against the concrete like a drumbeat of impending judgment. The dim light flickered above me, casting uneven shadows that highlighted the grime smeared across the walls and the cracks spiderwebbing the steps. Every landing reeked of mildew and something sour I didn’t want to identify.
Behind me, Gianni and Stefano trailed quietly, trying to match my pace. I didn’t slow down. The fifth floor wasn’t far, but the climb felt endless in this pit of decay.
As I reached the fifth floor, I paused for a moment, and took a deep breath. This was where the fun began—or where it went terribly wrong.
Stefano reached out to knock on Howard’s apartment door, but I yanked his hand away before he could announce our arrival. Without another word, I stepped forward and kicked the door in. The cheap wood splintered with a satisfying crack, swinging open to reveal a dimly lit space that reeked of stale alcohol and something far worse.
On the threadbare sofa slumped who I presumed to be Howard Sanders, his clothes rumpled and stained, empty bottles scattered around his feet. His head lolled to one side, eyes unfocused at first, but when they landed on me, they snapped wide with raw, panicked terror. He trembled, frozen in place, as if the air itself had turned hostile, his hands clutching at the cushions like a lifeline. The stench of whiskey clung to him, mingling with the sour tang of fear, and for a moment, he seemed too small, too exposed, to belong in the room at all.
I stepped closer, boots heavy against the floor, and let my shadow fall over him. My voice was quiet, controlled, but every syllable cut like a knife.
“Howard,” I said, letting the name hang in the air. “You owe me—”
Before the sentence could land, an adjoining door was ripped open. A young woman froze in the doorway, and the dim light caught her just right. Dark hair tumbled over her shoulders in soft waves, framing a face that could have been carved from moonlight. Her eyes were wide, sharp, and impossibly aware, and even in the squalor of this apartment, she carried a kind of effortless grace that made the room shift around her.
The curve of her neck, the set of her shoulders, the way she held herself with a mix of defiance and fragility—it was dangerous and magnetic all at once. For a split second, the mess, the stink, and the debt disappeared.
I let my gaze linger longer than I should, noting how her breath hitched just slightly at my gaze, the way her chest rose and fell in the faint light.
“Get out of here,” I said to her.
I wasn’t a monster. Well, I was, but she wasn’t involved in this. She didn’t belong in the mess Howard had created. And yet, even as I spoke the words, a part of me ached at the thought of seeing her leave.
“Now, back to business,” I said, looking down at Howard.
Howard’s face had gone pale. His eyes darted between me and her, panic twisting his features. He swallowed hard, his hands fidgeting with the frayed edges of the couch cushions as if holding onto them could anchor him.
“No!” the woman said. “Stop it!”
In an instant, she closed the gap between us. Even though I was a foot taller and seventy pounds heavier she shoved me with a surprising amount of force.
A surprising amount, but not enough to move me. I shoved Howard to the floor with one hand and turned my attention to the woman, a flicker of irritation igniting within me.
“You best be on your way or my benevolence will run out,” I hissed at her, letting the words hang like a warning in the stale, alcohol-scented air.
Her gaze didn’t waver. Sharp, unflinching, and impossible to ignore. For a moment, the world shrank down to just the two of us, the mess, the stink, and the debt fading into the background.
“Leave my dad alone,” she said, voice steady despite the quiver I could hear beneath it.
I studied her, taking in the fire in her eyes, the way she planted her feet and squared her shoulders. Bold. Reckless. And very much aware of the storm she’d just stepped into.
