Part 2: The Weight of Seven Decades
The wood of the door vibrated against my back. It wasn’t the attempt, polite knock of a neighbor asking for a favor. It was a rhythmic, heavy thudding—the sound of ownership. The sound of a man who believed everything on this floor, and everyone inside it, belonged to him.
Lucy let out a sharp, choked gasp, scrambling backward into my small entryway. Her feet tangled in her own oversized sneakers, and she nearly went down. I caught her elbow with a grip that surprised us both. At seventy-two, my joints ache when the rain rolls into the city, but anger has a way of turning brittle bones into iron.
“In the kitchen,” I whispered, my voice dropping into a low, steady register. “Under the table. Cover Leo’s mouth, but gently. Don’t make a sound.”
She didn’t argue. She moved with the frantic, silent grace of a hunted animal, disappearing behind the floral curtain that separated my hallway from the kitchen.
The knocking came again. Three more times. Boom. Boom. Boom.
“Mrs. Carmen?” A voice called out from the hallway. It was smooth. Too smooth. It possessed the practiced, easygoing warmth of a salesman or a politician, the kind of voice that makes you feel guilty for ever doubting it. “Mrs. Carmen, it’s Brandon from 302. I’m sorry to bother you so early, but I think my wife misplaced something of mine, and I saw her walking this way.”
