Chapter 2 - The Logic of the Debt
The rain outside turned from a drizzle into a heavy, driving sheet that rattled against the loose windowpanes of the kitchen. Dominic sat in the small armchair in the living room, his long legs stretched out across the worn rug, his eyes fixed on the hallway that led to the stairs.
Elena walked out of the kitchen twenty minutes later, her son sleeping soundly against her shoulder, his little green crayon still tucked into his pocket. She looked even smaller without the kitchen table between them, her frame slight, her damp sneakers making a soft, squelching sound against the linoleum.
“We’re going upstairs,” she said, her voice low so it wouldn't wake the boy.
“Wait,” Dominic said.
He stood up, reached into his coat, and pulled out a thick, leather wallet. He extracted a stack of crisp, hundred-dollar bills—ten of them—and held them out to her across the narrow space between the sofa and the television set.
“For the soup,” Dominic said. “And for the nurse you replaced.”
Elena looked at the money. To a woman wearing a faded sweatshirt with white knees in her jeans, a thousand dollars in cash was the difference between an eviction notice and a winter with the heat turned on. Dominic expected her to take it with the quick, grateful desperation he saw in everyone else in this neighborhood when he threw them a bone.
Instead, she tucked Leo tighter against her neck and stepped back.
“I didn't do it for your money, Mr. Bruno,” she said, her hazel eyes turning cold as ice. “I did it because Sam was crying in the hall and your mother didn't have the strength to lift him. Keep your cash for the agency that cheated you.”
“Nobody turns down my money in South Philly, Elena,” Dominic said, his eyes narrowing as his professional arrogance reasserted itself. “It makes people look like they have a motive.”
“My only motive is keeping my son away from men who carry guns under their wool coats,” she snapped softly, her eyes flashing with a sudden, dangerous fire. “Your father was a good man to the people on this block when he had his strength. My mother told me about how he kept the landlord from throwing her out when she was sick with the pneumonia. Consider the soup paid for by old credit.”
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She turned her back on him and walked out the front door, her small shoes clicking up the wooden stairs toward the third floor before Dominic could even put the money back into his wallet.
He stood in the dark hallway for a long time, the smell of garlic and rain lingering in the air, his fingers holding the ten hundred-dollar bills like a hand of cards that had suddenly lost all their value.
