Chapter 2 - Behind the Closed Bedroom DoorThe hallway was pitch black now, the single overhead fluorescent bulb flickering out entirely as Nathan reached the third floor. The air felt heavier, thick with an unnatural, freezing chill that seemed to seep straight out from beneath the peeling paint of Apartment 4B.
He didn't bother knocking this time.
Nathan pushed the door open. It gave way with a soft, mournful creak. The room was illuminated only by the pale, silvery glow of the streetlamp outside filtering through the dirty window panes.
At first, he thought the room was empty. The sewing machine sat silent on the table, the spool of thread frozen mid-spin.
"Lily?" Nathan whispered, his voice cracking slightly in the oppressive quiet.
No answer.
He stepped inside, his boots crunching softly on a stray piece of fabric scrap. The door to the back bedroom—the one that had remained shut the entire time he was there earlier—stood half-open, a sliver of darkness cutting across the floorboards.
"Lily? Are you in here?"
He pushed the bedroom door open with two fingers.
The sight that greeted him stole the remaining oxygen from his lungs. Lily was curled up entirely on the floor next to a makeshift mattress that lay directly on the cold linoleum. Her small face was pressed against the edge of a stained, fraying quilt. But it wasn't the child that froze Nathan in his tracks—it was the woman lying motionless on the bed.
Sarah.
Her skin was the color of old parchment, pulled tight across high, hollow cheekbones. Her lips were parted slightly, a thin line of dried blood at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were half-open, glazed and staring blankly up at the peeling water-stained ceiling.
"No," Nathan gasped, stumbling forward.
He dropped to his knees beside the bed, ignoring the dust and the biting chill. He reached out with a trembling hand and pressed two fingers against Sarah’s wrist.
Ice cold.
No pulse.
"Mommy...?"
A small, raspy voice broke the suffocating silence. Lily shifted on the floor, her heavy eyelids fluttering open. She didn't cry. There were no dramatic screams, no theatrical wailing. Just that devastating, hollow acceptance of a child who had already lived through a hundred nightmares.
"Mommy is sleeping," Lily whispered softly, her voice barely a breath. "She always sleeps like that now. Ever since the medicine ran out."
Nathan felt a physical blow to his chest, as if someone had driven a dagger straight through his ribs. He pulled his hand back as if he had been burned. The bills he had left on the table—the money he thought would buy them a few days of grace—sat untouched in the other room. They had come too late. They had always been too late.
"Lily, listen to me," Nathan said, his voice shaking violently as he scooped the frail little girl up into his arms. She felt like a bundle of dry twigs, terrifyingly light. "We need to get help. Right now."
"Is she going to the hospital?" Lily asked, resting her small, blood-pricked head against Nathan’s expensive cashmere coat, leaving a tiny smudge of red and oil on the fabric. "The hospital costs money, mister. We don't have any money. Mommy said if we spend money on the doctor, we won't have enough for the thread, and if we don't finish the dresses, the man from the factory won't pay us."
Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, a hot tear burning a trail down his cheek—the first tear he had shed since he was nine years old, standing over a wooden box in a muddy potter's field.
"The man from the factory isn't going to pay you anymore, Lily," Nathan choked out, his jaw clenching with a fury so blinding it consumed every drop of air in the room. "Because I am the man who owns this building. And starting tonight, nobody is ever going to take another cent from you again."
He stood up, holding the child tightly against his chest, and turned toward the door. But as he stepped back into the living room, the beam of his dropped phone illuminated something glinting on the small kitchen counter—something that made his blood run instantly cold.
It was an open ledger book, filled with handwritten accounts, receipts, and a business card tucked neatly into the front cover.
May you like
A business card bearing the logo of Sterling & Cole Enterprises—his own company.
And right beneath it was a legal notice stamped in bold red ink, dated just four days ago, ordering the immediate seizure and eviction of Apartment 4B for unpaid commercial subcontracting fees.
