Chapter 2 - Rent Due Tomorrow
I recognized Gabriel Hale from the photograph only because he had barely changed.
His hair was silver now, and his face looked thinner, but he had the same lowered eyelids and the same habit of studying a room before he entered it.
He saw Vincent standing at my table.
Then he saw me holding the picture.
I folded it and slipped it into my sleeve.
"Your table is waiting, Mr. Hale," Marco said, hurrying toward him.
Gabriel ignored him.
"Vincent. Is there a problem?"
Vincent recovered his smile so quickly that the change was almost impressive.
"An employee misunderstanding."
"I'm not an employee anymore," I said.
That earned me one cold look from Gabriel.
He did not ask my name.
Perhaps he already knew it.
Marco followed me as I passed the bar.
"Don't make this uglier than it has to be, Elena."
"You watched him touch me."
"I watched you upset an important customer."
"He owns the place. That's not a customer."
Marco's lips tightened.
"You'll receive your last check on Friday."
I asked for the incident to be recorded in writing.
He refused.
I made a note of the time and the names of the three people near the wine cabinet who had witnessed it, then stepped into the cold Chicago rain.
The waitress who shared closing shifts with me, Tasha Greene, followed two minutes later.
She pressed my coat into my arms.
"You left it in the locker."
"Thank you."
"I saw what happened."
Her eyes kept drifting toward the restaurant windows.
"Will you tell someone?"
"If somebody asks me the truth, yes."
She hesitated.
"Marco said our shifts disappear if we get involved."
I wasn't angry with her.
I had been afraid of losing a shift too many times to confuse courage with an easy choice.
"Don't lose your job tonight," I said.
Tasha squeezed my hand.
"But don't let him pretend you invented it."
At home, I counted the cash in my kitchen drawer.
One thousand four hundred and fifty dollars in rent was due by the end of the following day.
I had one thousand one hundred and ninety-three dollars, including the emergency money I kept in a tin above the refrigerator.
Tips from the night's canceled shift would have covered most of the difference.
That was what Vincent had understood before I did.
He could threaten me with a number small enough to sound ordinary and large enough to make my hands tremble.
I opened my laptop and checked Illinois tenant information.
A landlord could not simply throw a tenant into the street for missing a payment by a day.
There were notice requirements, a court process, and protections against retaliation.
Knowing those things didn't make the refrigerator less empty.
At midnight, a new email arrived from Harbor Row Properties.
SUBJECT: ACCOUNT STATUS REVIEW.
The message claimed that a routine system audit had identified a discrepancy in my lease and that I should present myself at the management office by nine the following morning.
There was no explanation.
I took screenshots of the email, my bank statement, and three years of rent confirmations.
Then I called my aunt, Teresa.
She had helped raise me after my mother died in an apartment fire above the original Belladonna Market.
She answered on the third ring.
"Elena? Are you hurt?"
I told her about Vincent.
I told her about Gabriel.
Then I described the words visible on the paper in my mother's hand.
The line became quiet.
"Aunt Teresa?"
"Where is the photograph now?"
"Here."
"Don't put it online. Don't show it to anybody else."
"What is the thirty percent?"
She inhaled shakily.
"Your mother used to say that the worst thing Vincent Bellini ever did was not what happened the night of the fire."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I should have told you years ago."
A heavy sound came through the phone, like a door closing.
Then someone spoke near her, too far away for me to make out the words.
Teresa lowered her voice.
"There's a blue metal box in your father's old storage unit. He wanted you to have it when you were ready."
"What storage unit?"
"The one he kept paying for after we moved."
She began reciting an address and a six-digit access code.
I wrote them on the back of an unopened utility bill.
"Teresa, who is with you?"
No answer.
"Who just came to your door?"
"Listen to me, Elena."
Her breath caught.
"If the box still has its lock, don't use the key I gave your father. The lock was changed."
"Why?"
"Because somebody got there before me."
The call ended.
A minute later, I received a photograph from an unfamiliar number.
It showed my apartment door from the hallway.
May you like
The message beneath it said, simply:
PAY YOUR RENT. FORGET THE PICTURE.
