Chapter 3: The Ride into the Abyss

The silence inside the rear of the Mercedes was rich, heavy, and absolutely suffocating. Dominic sat stiffly against the heated leather, his posture rigid, while the little girl pressed herself as far into the opposite door as she could manage.

“Turn left on 14th,” the girl’s raspy voice suddenly broke the silence.

“You sure about this, Dom?” Paulie muttered from the driver’s seat, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror. “We’re heading into the East End projects. It’s hostile territory. Rossi’s crew runs the block.”

“I said drive, Paulie,” Dominic hissed.

“Clara went off the bridge six years ago,” Paulie argued, his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel betraying his panic. “They dredged the river. I was there, Dom. I saw the car. She’s dead.”

“Then who is this?” Dominic pointed a trembling finger at the child. “Look at her eyes, Paulie! Look at them!”

Paulie glanced in the mirror and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He didn’t say another word.

The gleaming glass facades of downtown bled into the industrial gray of the garment district, rotting away completely into the forgotten sprawl of the East End. The tires of the Mercedes thumped violently over deep potholes and crunched over broken malt liquor bottles.

“Pull up to Building Four,” the girl instructed, pointing a dirty finger at the windshield. “The one with the burn marks above the door.”

The car glided to a halt in front of a monolithic slab of brutalist concrete. It looked less like a housing project and more like a vertical prison. The stench of stale urine, boiled cabbage, and damp decay seeped through the car’s ventilation system before the doors even opened.

“You want me to go up first?” Paulie asked, his hand resting on the lapel of his jacket near his shoulder holster. “Clear it?”

“No,” Dominic said, his voice sounding hollow, belonging to someone else entirely. “Stay with the car. Keep the engine running.”

Dominic followed the girl into the stairwell. The air grew thicker, heavier, smelling of mold and profound desperation. On the fifth floor, the girl pushed open the fire door and walked down a narrow hallway where the carpet had worn down to the bare, splintered floorboards.

She stopped in front of apartment 512. The door was made of cheap composite wood, splintered near the deadbolt where it had clearly been kicked in. She pushed it open with a screeching whine of rusty hinges.

Dominic stopped at the threshold. His heart, which had maintained a steady, slow rhythm through countless shootouts and sit-downs, was hammering violently against his ribs.

The apartment was a single, freezing cramped room. A solitary window was coated in a thick layer of frost and grime. A mattress lay directly on the floor in the corner, covered in a tangled mess of gray, moth-eaten blankets. From beneath the blankets came a wet, rattling cough that tore from the back of a throat desperate for air.

Dominic stepped inside, his expensive leather shoes clicking against the warped linoleum.

“Mama?” the little girl whispered, running to the mattress and pulling back the edge of the fabric.

The woman on the mattress was gaunt, her cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, her skin holding the pallor of old parchment. Dark, bruised circles ringed eyes that had lost all their light. But as she turned her head, squinting against the harsh light filtering from the hallway, Dominic saw it.

Resting against her prominent, hollow collarbone, suspended on a cheap tarnished shoelace, was a heavy yellow gold ring. A two-headed hound.

“Dominic,” Clara whispered.

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