Chapter 3 - The Weight of a LedgerThe enforcers dragged her husband across the floor and threw him down onto the tile just outside the bathroom door. He landed hard, his hands scraping against the broken wood, his face twisted in panic.
“Please,” he stammered, looking up at Vincent with pathetic desperation. “I didn't know! If I knew she knew you—if I knew she had your number—I swear to God I never would’ve touched her! We can work this out! I have money, I have a business—*”
Vincent looked down at him the way a scientist might look at a particularly repulsive insect.
“You had a wife,” Vincent corrected, his voice dangerously low. “You had a home. You had a life where nobody was going to peel your skin off inch by inch. And you traded all of it because you couldn't control your temper.”
“She’s my wife!” her husband cried out, pointing a shaking finger toward the bathroom. “A husband has a right to discipline—*”
Before he could finish the sentence, Vincent’s boot came down sharply across his wrist, pinning his hand to the floor. A sharp crack echoed through the room, followed by a scream of agony that cut off sharply as Vincent leaned down, pressing his weight forward.
“Nobody in my city has the right to break bones that don't belong to them,” Vincent said, his voice level and steady. “Especially not a coward who beats waitresses working double shifts to survive.”
Vincent signaled to one of the enforcers behind him.
“Take him to the warehouse on 4th Street,” Vincent ordered coldly. “Have Marcus audit every financial record he owns. Strip his accounts, dissolve his business licenses, and make sure he spends the next twenty years in a maximum-security cell where the guards don't like men who hit women.”
“No! Please, Mr. Moretti! Not prison! Please!” her husband screamed as the enforcers hauled him up by his arms, dragging him out the door while he kicked and wept like a child.
The front door slammed shut, sealing the apartment in a sudden, profound silence.
Vincent turned back toward the bathroom. He knelt down once more beside Lena, his expression softening completely.
“It’s over, Lena,” he said gently. “He’s never coming back here. And nobody will ever touch you like that again.”
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Lena closed her eyes, a massive wave of exhaustion crashing over her. The adrenaline that had kept her upright for the last twenty minutes finally vanished. Her head swayed, her vision darkened at the edges, and as she began to tip sideways toward the cold tile, strong arms caught her before she hit the floor.
The last thing she felt before the darkness took her was the steady, undeniable safety of a man the rest of the world was terrified of.
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