Chapter 2 - The Kitchen Counter Surgery
Lena’s apartment was a cramped, two-room flat on the edge of the city’s poorest district. The wallpaper was peeling, and the radiator hissed like an angry cat. In the small bedroom, five-year-old Lily was fast asleep, clutching a tattered teddy bear.
On the kitchen table sat a mountain of past-due notices and an eviction warning.
Now, a six-foot-two mafia enforcer was stretched across her cheap linoleum floor, bleeding out onto her only good rug.
Lena was a high school dropout who washed sheets for twelve hours a day, but she wasn't stupid. She knew that if she called the police, the men in the dark coats would find out before the sirens even arrived. The police in this city belonged to the syndicates.
“God forgive me,” she whispered.
She dragged him into the kitchen. She used the cash he gave her to run to the 24-hour pharmacy down the street, buying sewing needles, fishing line, rubbing alcohol, and heavy gauze.
For the next three hours, Lena fought for the stranger’s life.
She cut away his expensive, tailored shirt. The wound was a jagged tear just below his ribs—a knife twist, meant to disembowel. The amount of blood was sickening. Using her phone’s flashlight held between her teeth, she poured the rubbing alcohol directly into the wound.
The man’s body violently convulsed, his muscles tightening like steel cables, but he didn't scream. He bit down on a wooden spoon she had shoved into his mouth until the wood splintered.
With hands that wouldn't stop shaking, Lena began to stitch. She remembered how her grandmother used to sew leather boots. Skin is just thinner leather, she told herself, fighting back the urge to vomit. Thread it through. Pull it tight. Knot it.
By 5:00 AM, the bleeding had stopped. The stranger was draped in her late father’s oversized flannel shirt, his chest rising and falling in a deep, medicated sleep.
Lena collapsed into a kitchen chair, her hands stained red, her mind completely blank with exhaustion. She looked at the stack of hundred-dollar bills on the counter. It was easily five thousand dollars—more than she made in six months.
Suddenly, a soft voice broke the silence.
“Mommy?”
Lena jumped, immediately stepping in front of the sleeping giant on the floor to block him from view. Lily stood in the doorway, rubbing her eyes, her little pink pajamas faded from too many washes.
“Hi, sweetie,” Lena said, her voice cracking. “Why are you awake?”
“I heard a noise,” Lily whispered. Then, her eyes drifted to the floor. She saw the stranger’s boots sticking out from behind the kitchen island. “Is that Santa?”
Lena let out a breathless, tragic laugh. “No, baby. That’s… a friend from work. He got hurt, and he’s taking a nap. Go back to bed, okay? Mommy will be right there.”
Lily nodded sleepily, but before she turned, she let out a harsh, wet cough that shook her tiny frame. It was a sound that broke Lena’s heart every time she heard it. Lily’s lungs were failing. A congenital defect was slowly suffocating her, and the specialist at the city’s premium clinic had given Lena a brutal ultimatum: $100,000 for a revolutionary treatment, or watch her daughter fade away by her sixth birthday.
As Lily walked back to her room, the stranger’s eyes slowly opened. He had heard the cough. He looked at Lena, then at the blood-soaked kitchen, and finally at the stack of cash.
“You have a sick kid,” he said, his voice stronger now, though still laced with pain.
“Don't look at her,” Lena said fiercely, stepping forward, suddenly feeling fiercely protective. “You got your stitches. Now take your money and get out of my house.”
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The man slowly sat up, pressing a hand to his bandaged ribs. He didn't touch the gun on the table. Instead, he looked at Lena with a chillingly calm expression.
“The money on the counter is just a tip, Lena,” he said. “My name is Julian Vance. And you have no idea whose life you just saved.”
