She Helped the Injured Mafia Boss Without Asking

Clara stared at Victor in absolute disbelief.

“My apartment is a crime scene, Victor!” Clara shouted, swerving to avoid a semi-truck on the wet highway.

“Your men kicked my door down this morning.”

“Isabella’s hit squads will check the Narrows first!”

Victor shook his head weakly, pressing a bloody hand against his side.

“No, they won't.”

“Isabella thinks you’re just a random back-alley doctor I used out of desperation.”

“She doesn't know about the hidden safe beneath your floorboards.”

Clara slammed on the brakes, the heavy SUV skidding slightly before she regained control.

She turned to stare at the bleeding mafia boss sitting in her passenger seat.

“What are you talking about?” Clara demanded, her heart hammering against her ribs.

“What hidden safe?”

Victor let out a ragged, painful breath.

“Two years ago, when you lost your medical license, you bought that apartment from a man named Henderson.”

“Henderson is a front man for the Kaine Syndicate.”

“I own your building, Clara.”

Clara felt the world spin wildly out of control.

She had spent two years hiding from the world in an apartment secretly owned by the most ruthless criminal in the city.

“I use the properties in the Narrows to hide emergency assets,” Victor confessed, his voice growing weaker.

“Underneath the linoleum in your kitchen, there is a steel lockbox.”

“It contains two million dollars in untraceable cash, fake passports, and a ledger containing the bank account numbers of every politician on Isabella’s payroll.”

“If we get that ledger, we can destroy her coup entirely.”

Clara gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles turning white.

She had stitched him up right on top of his hidden fortune.

“You’re telling me you collapsed in my apartment by coincidence?” Clara asked fiercely.

Victor offered a weak, bloody smile.

“In my line of work, Clara, there are no coincidences.”

“I was trying to reach the safe when the Colombians ambushed me in the alley behind your building.”

“You were just the convenient doctor who lived upstairs.”

Clara hit the gas, speeding toward the city limits.

She didn't know whether to scream at him or thank him.

He had manipulated her entirely, but right now, he was her only shield against a heavily armed cartel.

They arrived in the Narrows an hour later.

The streets were dark, the rain pouring down in relentless sheets.

Clara parked the armored SUV in the shadows of an abandoned warehouse two blocks from her apartment building.

“Can you walk?” Clara asked, helping Victor out of the vehicle.

He grunted in pain, leaning heavily on her shoulder.

“I have to.”

They moved silently through the wet, trash-filled alleyways.

They reached the back door of Clara’s apartment building.

The front door was still completely shattered from Elias Vance’s raid that morning.

Clara unlocked the back entrance, and they slipped inside.

The apartment was exactly as she had left it.

Cold, damp, and smelling faintly of industrial bleach.

“The kitchen,” Victor wheezed, collapsing into a hard-backed wooden chair.

Clara grabbed a crowbar from her toolbox and walked over to the spot Victor pointed out.

She pried up the cheap, peeling linoleum near the stove.

Beneath the flooring was a solid steel panel with a biometric thumb scanner.

Victor staggered over, pressing his bloody thumb against the glass.

The panel clicked and hissed open.

Clara pulled out a heavy black duffel bag.

She unzipped it, revealing stacks of banded hundred-dollar bills and a small, leather-bound notebook.

The ledger.

“We have it,” Clara breathed, a massive wave of relief washing over her.

“Now we can buy our way out of this city.”

Before Victor could answer, the shattered front door of the apartment was violently kicked open.

Standing in the entryway, illuminated by the flickering orange neon sign from the pawn shop across the street, was a man Clara had hoped to never see again.

It was S, the heavyset bodega owner.

But he wasn't holding a broom or a cash register drawer.

He was holding a suppressed assault rifle, aimed directly at Clara’s chest.