Chapter 2 - The Watch Left Behind
When Clara finally woke up, she was slumped uncomfortably in the armchair facing the front door, a sharp crick in her neck feeling like a rusty hinge. A half-empty mug of cold black coffee sat on the floor beside her feet.
Gray, dismal daylight filtered through the cheap plastic blinds. It was 11:00 a.m.
The kitchen still smelled sharply of industrial bleach. The linoleum was spotless. The only tangible evidence that a violent, bleeding giant had occupied her kitchen hours earlier was his ruined, blood-soaked shirt sitting at the bottom of the trash bin—and a heavy, glittering object resting quietly on the corner of the counter.
Clara walked over and picked it up.
It was a Patek Philippe watch. Platinum casing, intricate mechanical complications, and an unmistakable weight that screamed luxury. It was easily worth more than the entire dilapidated apartment building she lived in.
He must have unstrapped it while she was stitching him up and absentmindedly left it behind.
“Idiot,” she muttered to herself.
She opened her silverware drawer, shoved aside a pile of grease-stained takeout menus, and buried the expensive watch deep in the back corner beneath a stack of plastic forks. She wanted nothing to do with it. Keeping luxury items left behind by midnight trauma patients was a fast-track ticket to a shallow grave in the river. Clara already had more than enough trouble breathing without adding stolen cartel heirlooms to her collection.
Her rent was already three weeks overdue, and her hostile landlord, Henderson, had slipped a final eviction notice under her door yesterday morning threatening to change the locks by Friday.
She splashed some cold, rusty water on her face, pulled a heavy canvas jacket over her woolen sweater, and stepped out onto the street.
The rain had finally stopped, leaving behind a thick, miserable mist. The city smelled heavily of wet asphalt, coal smoke, and rotting garbage. Clara walked two blocks down toward S’s neighborhood bodega to grab some milk and bread.
As she turned the corner, she instantly knew something was wrong.
The Narrows was usually a chaotic symphony of life: children shouting across narrow alleys, cars backfiring, vendors yelling prices, and neighbors arguing from rusted fire escapes. That morning, the street was dead silent. The stoops were completely empty. Even the local teenagers who usually loitered beside the chain-link fences selling dime bags had vanished.
Clara pushed open the glass door of the bodega. The bell chimed into an oppressive vacuum of sound.
S, a heavyset man in his sixties who normally greeted her with a loud complaint about the weather, stood behind the counter looking pale, sweaty, and terrified as he mechanically wiped the plastic register with a dirty rag.
“Morning, S,” Clara said cautiously, walking toward the small dairy refrigerator in the back. “Awfully quiet out there today.”
S flinched violently, dropping his rag. He looked up, his eyes wide with unmasked panic. “Clara. Yeah. Quiet. You should... you should go back inside, Clara. Good day to stay locked up.”
She brought a carton of milk to the counter and laid a crumpled five-dollar bill on the surface. “Is everything okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
S leaned over the counter, lowering his voice to a trembling whisper while glancing nervously toward the front window. “You didn’t hear? The docks last night. There was a massive hit. The Colombian cartel ambushed a high-level Kaine Syndicate sit-down.”
Clara felt a slow, heavy thud in her chest. The Kaine Syndicate ruled the city with an iron fist. They controlled the judges, the police precinct, the shipping ports, and every street corner in the Narrows.
“A gang war?” she kept her voice carefully neutral. “That’s downtown business, S. It doesn’t affect us here.”
“You don’t understand,” S whispered frantically, wiping sweat from his forehead. “They didn’t just hit some low-level soldiers. They hit Victor Kaine himself. Word on the street is they carved him up bad. Nobody knows if he’s even alive or dead right now, but the whole city is on lockdown. Kaine’s enforcers are tearing apart every underground clinic, back-alley doctor, and pharmacy in the tri-state area looking for him.”
Clara’s hand tightened around the milk carton. A sudden, chilling memory flashed through her mind: a massive frame in a shredded cashmere coat, deep muscle lacerations across the ribs, and dark, river-stone eyes that refused to blink.
May you like
Victor Kaine.
She had just spent an hour elbow-deep in the internal wounds of the most dangerous crime lord in the country.
