Chapter 1 - The Gap Between Breathing and Failing
Marco handed the pharmacist his solid black credit card without saying a single word.
His expression remained completely devoid of any emotion, a mask he had perfected over a decade of ruling the city’s criminal underworld.
The nervous pharmacist quickly processed the payment and slid the brown paper bag across the sterile glass counter.
Marco took the bag, the crinkling paper sounding incredibly loud in the quiet, brightly lit store.
He walked back out into the freezing November wind, his expensive dark wool overcoat catching the sudden breeze.
He climbed into the driver’s seat of his armored black SUV and stared down at the passenger seat.
There, resting carefully in a protective paper sleeve, was Jenny Reeves’s cracked, outdated blue phone.
Beside it sat the brown bag containing three maximum-strength prescription inhalers that she could not afford.
Marco started the heavy engine, the powerful machine roaring to life as he pulled away from the curb.
He did not have a logical reason for doing this, and men in his dangerous line of work survived by always being logical.
But watching that exhausted mother count one hundred and eighty dollars with such quiet, heartbreaking dignity had violently shattered his control.
It had forcefully dragged him back to a tiny, unheated apartment twenty years ago, where his own mother had coughed her lungs out because they were fifty dollars short for her medicine.
Marco had sworn on his mother’s grave that he would never be helpless or poor again, building a massive empire of fear and money to ensure it.
Yet, all his millions had not stopped that familiar, suffocating feeling of despair from gripping his chest when Jenny walked into his pawn shop.
He punched the Callaway Street address into his secure navigation system, his jaw clenched so tightly his teeth ached.
The affluent, polished high-rises of downtown quickly faded away, replaced by the crumbling brick buildings and broken streetlights of the city's forgotten edge.
He parked his massive SUV across the street from a heavily decayed, four-story apartment building that looked like a strong wind could knock it down.
The front security door was propped open with a broken brick, the intercom system completely smashed and useless.
Marco stepped out into the cold, gripping the brown paper bag and the cracked phone in one large, heavily scarred hand.
He walked up the concrete stairs, his expensive leather shoes making no sound in the dark, graffiti-covered hallway.
When he reached the second floor, a loud, aggressive voice suddenly echoed through the thin, poorly insulated walls.
Marco stopped completely in his tracks, his dark eyes narrowing into dangerous, lethal slits.
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The loud, cruel voice was coming directly from apartment 2B, the exact address printed on the pawn shop receipt.
Someone was inside that apartment with Jenny, and they were screaming at her.
