Chapter 3 - THE SHADOWS OF THE INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTThe address Mrs. Gable provided for the "lady and the man" was a dilapidated brick apartment complex tucked away behind the railway tracks on the city's east side. The air here smelled of rusted iron, damp coal, and stagnant water.
I parked my car a block away—a sleek luxury sedan that looked as out of place here as a diamond in a coal mine. Walking down the cracked sidewalk, I felt eyes on me. Drug addicts, transient laborers, and people who had fallen entirely through the cracks of society watched me from sagging porches and darkened windows.
When I reached apartment 4B, I didn’t bother knocking softly. I banged my fist against the hollow-core wooden door until the frame rattled.
The lock clicked, and the door swung open. A heavy-set man with a stained undershirt and a cigarette dangling from his lower lip glared at me. Behind him, a woman with bleached blonde hair and tired eyes was aggressively scrubbing a greasy pan in a tiny, overflowing sink.
“What?” the man grunted, sizing up my tailored suit and expensive watch. “If you’re selling insurance, get lost.”
“I’m Julian Vance,” I said, my voice dropping into the cold, authoritative tone I usually reserved for hostile acquisitions.
The man’s eyes flickered with instant recognition—or perhaps fear. News of Vanguard Capital’s massive urban development projects occasionally made the local headlines, usually accompanied by protests.
“The big shot,” the man scoffed, stepping back to let me in without an invitation. “What’s a billionaire doing in a shithole like this? Come to evict us again?”
“I’m here about Mila,” I said, stepping past him into the cramped, foul-smelling apartment.
The woman at the sink dropped her sponge with a loud splash and whirled around. “Mila? That little parasite? Look, mister, if you’re her new social worker, you can take her back right now. We didn’t sign up to be foster parents. Her mother left her with us for ‘a couple of days’ while she went to sort out her head at a clinic, and those couple of days turned into four months. No state check, no help, nothing.”
“She called her ‘extra,’” I said, my fists clenching at my sides.
“She is extra!” the woman snapped, her voice rising shrilly. “We’ve got our own mouths to feed. We put a roof over her head, didn’t we? We let her sleep on the floor of the utility closet, gave her scraps from our table. But we’re done. If you’re her guardian angel or whatever, write us a check for our trouble and take the brat off our hands.”
The casual cruelty in her voice made my blood run cold. A utility closet. A six-year-old child locked away in the dark because she didn't fit into their miserable, broken lives.
“You won't have to worry about her anymore,” I said, my voice terrifyingly calm. “She’s in state custody. But before I leave, I want to know something. Her mother—where is she?”
The man laughed dryly, dragging on his cigarette. “Dead, probably. Or wandering the highways. Women like that don’t survive long once they lose everything. She dropped the kid off, walked out into the rain, and never came back. Now, are you going to compensate us for our time, or do I have to call the police for trespassing?”
I didn't answer with money. I answered with power.
“Everything in this building is currently owned by a subsidiary of Vanguard Capital,” I said quietly, pulling out my phone. “And as of five minutes ago, my legal team is filing an emergency health and safety inspection order for every single unit in this complex. Violations for illegal subletting, structural neglect, and hazardous living conditions will be processed by morning. You’ll be on the street by noon tomorrow.”
May you like
The man’s face drained of color. The cigarette dropped from his mouth, burning a small black hole into the linoleum floor.
I turned my back on them and walked out, knowing that justice in the real world was often brutal, but tonight, it felt entirely necessary.
