Chapter 3 - THE GHOST OF OAK STREET
I didn't knock.
With a slow, deliberate movement, I gripped the brass doorknob of Apartment 2B. It was unlocked—another testament to the reckless desperation of people who had nothing left to steal.
The door swung inward with a soft creak.
The apartment was painfully sparse. A single radiator hissed and clanked in the corner, throwing off dry, artificial heat. A worn floral sofa sat beneath a flickering floor lamp, and a small wooden table held a single hot plate and the cracked plastic container Beatrice had filled from my kitchen.
Beatrice stood by the counter, her back to me, spooning mashed potatoes onto a chipped porcelain plate.
On the sofa, wrapped in a faded patchwork quilt, sat a young woman.
She looked up as the door opened.
The breath rushed out of my lungs. The world stopped spinning.
Even with the pale, hollow cheeks, the dark circles under her eyes, and the thinness of a body wasting away from chronic illness, there was no mistaking the bone structure, the shape of the jaw, and those unmistakable, piercing amber eyes—the exact same eyes that stared back at me every morning in the mirror.
It was Elena.
My sister. Alive.
Beatrice spun around at the sound of my entry, letting out a sharp, terrified gasp. The spoon slipped from her hand, clattering against the linoleum floor.
“Who—what are you doing? How did you get in here?” Beatrice stammered, throwing herself physically between me and the sofa, her hands trembling violently. “Please! Take whatever you want! There’s no money here, I swear to God, just leave us alone!”
“Boss?”
Outside in the hallway, heavy footsteps approached, and Lorenzo pushed past the threshold, his hand instinctively sliding toward the concealed firearm beneath his jacket. He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes darting from me to Beatrice, and finally landing on the young woman wrapped in the quilt.
“What the hell is this?” Lorenzo muttered, his professional composure cracking for the first time in years.
I ignored him. My boots felt glued to the floorboards as I stepped past Beatrice, my gaze locked entirely on the girl on the sofa.
Elena shrank back against the cushions, pulling the quilt up to her chin. Her lips parted, and she stared at me with a mixture of terror and dawning, agonizing recognition.
“Vince?” she whispered, her voice cracking like dry paper.
The sound of my childhood nickname, spoken in a voice I hadn't heard since we were children hiding in the panic room of the Oak Street mansion, shattered my emotional armor completely.
“Elena,” I choked out, the word tearing past my lips.
I crossed the small room in two strides and dropped to my knees beside the sofa, ignoring the dust and the cold. I reached out with shaking hands, hovering just inches from her face, afraid that if I touched her, she would dissolve into smoke like a phantom born of exhaustion and guilt.
“You’re... you’re supposed to be dead,” I whispered, tears burning the backs of my eyes.
May you like
Elena began to cry, small, broken sobs shaking her frail frame as she reached out and pressed her cold fingers against my cheek. “I am dead, Vince,” she wept softly. “To the world... to the syndicate... I had to be.”
Beatrice collapsed onto a nearby chair, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving as the secret she had guarded for over a decade finally spilled out into the open.
