Chapter 3 - The Rain in South Boston
Three weeks passed.
For Morgan, the world had become a strange, tense place.
After the terror of that Saturday in the café, she had expected her life to collapse. She had spent the first forty-eight hours jumping at every sound outside her South Boston apartment door, waiting for shadowy men in dark suits to break through the locks.
But no one came.
Instead, her life carried on in its usual grinding, agonizing routine.
Her rent was due in four days. The landlord, a slimy man named Henderson who owned three dilapidated buildings on her block, had already left two final notices stuck to her door with red tape. She was short four hundred dollars. She had taken on extra shifts at the diner, leaving Zuzu with an elderly neighbor, but the tips were miserable, and her body was breaking down under the weight of eighteen-hour workdays.
Yet, despite her exhaustion, she couldn't stop thinking about him.
Every time she looked at Zuzu’s stuffed bear—sitting neatly on the small white toddler bed with its ear sewn back on in flawless, tiny brown stitches—her heart twisted.
She remembered the way Brooks had spoken to the child. The absolute, unforced respect he had shown them both. The way he had knelt on the floor of the café, picked up her dropped keys, and looked at her as if he were the one who was unworthy.
“I am the head of Valley Enterprises... Everything I own now is legal, clean... But my family has a history.”
She had looked up Valley Enterprises on the library computer two nights ago.
She had expected to find news articles about mob violence and murder trials. And while there were old stories from ten years ago about his father, the recent news was entirely different. Brooks Valley had donated twenty million dollars to pediatric cancer research. He had built two low-income housing complexes in Dorchester. He had established a legal defense fund for families facing wrongful evictions.
He wasn't a monster. He was a man fighting a war against the darkness he had been born into.
And she had called him a mob boss and run away.
On Thursday afternoon, the rain returned—a cold, torrential downpour that turned the streets of South Boston into rivers of slush.
Morgan walked home from her shift at the diner, her thin canvas shoes soaked through, her coat offering zero protection against the biting wind. She carried a plastic bag containing two cheap frozen dinners and a carton of milk.
As she turned the corner onto her street, she froze.
Parked directly in front of her apartment building was a beat-up gray pickup truck. Standing on the porch, banging his heavy fist against her apartment door, was Henderson, the landlord.
"Morgan!" Henderson yelled, his voice carrying down the empty, rain-swept street. "I know you're around here somewhere! Don't make me break this lock!"
Morgan swallowed her fear, pulled her wet hood lower, and walked up the front steps. "Mr. Henderson. Please. Don't wake the neighbors."
Henderson turned around, his bloated, red face contorting into an ugly scowl. He reeked of cheap bourbon.
"The neighbors can go to hell, just like you!" Henderson spat, stepping down until he was inches from her face. "Where's my four hundred bucks, Morgan? You're three weeks late!"
"I have two hundred," she begged, her voice trembling as the freezing rain dripped from her hair onto her neck. "I can give you two hundred today, and the rest on Friday when my diner check clears—"
"I don't care about your diner check!" Henderson roared, grabbing her by her wet coat sleeve. "I have a tenant willing to pay double what you pay, and he moves in on Monday! You pack your bags, or I'm throwing your stuff on the curb tonight!"
"You can't do that!" Morgan cried, trying to pull her arm back. "It's illegal to evict without notice! I have a four-year-old child!"
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"Watch me!" Henderson sneered, tightening his grip on her arm, squeezing hard enough to bruise. "You got no husband, no money, and no lawyer. Who's gonna stop me? You think anyone gives a damn about a broke widow?"
"I do," a voice spoke from the bottom of the steps.
