Chapter 10 - The Abandoned Apartment
The digital clock on the diner wall read 2:15 AM by the time Elena finally gathered enough strength to leave the safety of the restaurant. She had called Sister Beatrice from the diner's landline, whispering a hurried warning about what had happened before begging the nun not to call the authorities just yet—fearing it would trigger a larger, bloodier retaliation before she could secure her own safety.
She walked the remaining distance to her apartment building with cautious steps, staying close to the building walls and avoiding the streetlamps. The neighborhood was dead quiet, shrouded in a heavy, damp fog that rolled in from the river.
When she reached her apartment building—a tired, three-story walk-up with peeling paint and flickering hallway lights—she hesitated at the glass front door. Her green handbag, containing her house keys, was long gone. But she knew a trick older than the locks on the doors; thirty years of living in the district taught you every architectural flaw in these old brick buildings.
Moving around to the alleyway behind the building, Elena stepped carefully over a pile of discarded cardboard boxes and reached behind a loose drainpipe near the ground-floor window. Her fingers brushed against cold iron—a spare brass key she had hidden there twenty years ago during her first year of employment at Mateo’s workshop.
Her hands shook as she unlocked the small casement window, pushed it open with a soft squeak, and hoisted her tired body through the narrow opening, landing quietly on the linoleum floor of her small kitchen.
The apartment was pitch black. The familiar smell of jasmine tea and old fabric welcomed her, offering a brief, pathetic illusion of safety.
Elena flicked on the single small lamp on her bedside table, casting a dim, yellow glow across the tiny studio space. She needed to pack. She needed to grab her meager savings hidden inside the lining of her mattress, some basic clothes, and catch the first morning bus out of the state.
She walked over to the bed and began tearing back the sheets, ripping open the side seam of her mattress with her bare fingers. Her hand plunged inside the stuffing, searching frantically for the small canvas pouch where she had stored her life savings—cash saved up dollar by dollar over decades of honest labor.
Her fingers closed around nothing.
Elena froze. She jammed her hand deeper into the mattress, ripping the foam padding apart until her fingers hit bare wooden slats. The pouch was gone.
A sharp, metallic click echoed loudly from the dark hallway just outside her apartment door.
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Elena spun around, her heart stopping dead in her chest. The front door of her apartment slowly swung inward on well-oiled hinges, revealing a tall figure standing in the doorway, holding her stolen green handbag in one hand and a silenced firearm in the other.
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