Chapter 2 - The Shadow of the Tenement
The biting wind had stripped the sensation from Hollis’s fingers, but the surge of adrenaline kept her moving. She couldn't call an ambulance. In this part of the city, an emergency call to the alley behind Halloran Tower meant squad cars, blinding floodlights, and child protective services asking questions about why a night-shift custodian’s six-year-old boy was sleeping alone two miles away in a rent-controlled walk-up.
More terrifying than the authorities, however, was the crest stamped into the bloody paper.
Hollis knew that emblem. Anyone who had grown up in the lower wards of New Carthage knew the two crossed daggers under the open falcon’s wing: the Moretti Syndicate. To bring the police into Moretti business was an invitation for a firebomb through one's front window.
"Hang on to me," Hollis grunted through clenched teeth.
She hauled the limp girl upward, draping the slender, burning body over her shoulder. The girl couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds; she was starved down to hollow collarbones and sinew. Dragging her toward the service exit, Hollis shoved the girl into the passenger seat of her rusted 2008 Honda Civic, throwing an old wool moving blanket over the girl’s trembling form.
The drive across the river felt like an eternity. Every set of headlights in her rearview mirror looked like an executioner’s pursuit. Beside her, the girl writhed against the vinyl seat, small whimperings slipping past her cracked lips.
"Dante... please... don't let him sign it..." she murmured, her head thrashing against the headrest.
"Shh. Just breathe," Hollis whispered, white-knuckling the steering wheel. "Almost there."
She parked in the alley behind her tenement building on 4th Street, cutting the engine before the muffler could rattle. She checked the darkness. The street was quiet, blanketed in dirty gray snow. Hoisting the girl once more, Hollis navigated the icy back stairs to the third floor, praying the floorboards wouldn't creak loudly enough to wake Mrs. Gable next door.
Unlocking the deadbolt with trembling fingers, Hollis slipped inside and pushed the door shut with her heel.
The apartment smelled of warmed cinnamon and radiator steam. In the far corner, tucked beneath a mountain of quilts on the pull-out couch, was Toby. His small chest rose and fell in peaceful rhythm, an open picture book resting beside his pillow.
Hollis exhaled a ragged breath, carrying the unconscious stranger straight into the narrow bathroom. She lowered her onto the tiled floor, propping her back against the porcelain tub.
Only under the harsh, buzzing fluorescent bulb did the true horror of the girl’s condition reveal itself.
The girl’s oversized coat fell open. Beneath the grime, her ribbed knit sweater was soaked through with dark, sticky maroon. Hollis gently peeled the fabric away from her torso, stifling a gasp with the back of her wrist.
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A deep, jagged puncture wound—inflicted by a serrated blade—was festering just beneath the girl’s ribs. Around her delicate wrists were raw, purple rings where metal shackles had worn through the skin to the bone.
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