Chapter 6 - The Broken Door
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Tony Brandt took the stairs two at a time, his heavy leather jacket creaking in the damp corridor.
He reached the second-floor landing and stopped in front of apartment 2B.
The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage and old grease.
Brandt spat a piece of tobacco onto the linoleum floor and pounded three times with the meat of his fist.
"Elena!" he barked. "Open the damn door!"
Silence answered from inside.
Brandt scowled, rattling the brass doorknob. It was locked.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a duplicate key he had stolen from the landlord two years prior, and jammed it into the cylinder.
The lock turned with a dry click.
Brandt shoved the door inward, expecting to find me huddled over my kitchen table with a stack of bills.
Instead, the small studio apartment was empty.
The faded curtains hung still in the draft.
On the laminate counter, a coffee mug sat half-full next to an unopened loaf of generic white bread.
Brandt walked into the bedroom area, kicking open the closet door.
My canvas work bag was gone, along with my two winter coats.
"Bitch skipped town," Brandt muttered, his face turning an ugly shade of crimson.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a local number.
"Marcus," Brandt snapped the moment the call connected.
"What do you want, Tony?" Marcus Vance whispered nervously on the other end. "I’m in the middle of the procurement review. Dante is in the building."
"The Hale girl is gone," Brandt hissed, pacing across my worn rug.
"Her apartment is cleaned out."
"Why do I care about some broke waitress?" Marcus asked, irritation bleeding into his voice.
"Because she owes me fifteen hundred bucks by Friday, and nobody walks out on my tab," Brandt growled.
"Where does she work now? You said you saw her name on an application last week."
There was a long silence on the line, followed by the sound of shuffling paper.
"She applied for an auditing position here," Marcus said, his voice suddenly dropping an octave.
"At Moretti Hospitality?"
"Yeah. Frank Rossi interviewed her."
"Did she get the job?" Brandt demanded.
"I don't know, Tony! I don't manage the basement accountants!"
"Find out," Brandt ordered. "If she’s working in Dante’s tower, she’s collecting a paycheck."
"And that means she has my money."
"Tony, don't come near the headquarters," Marcus pleaded, genuine panic in his tone.
"Dante has been walking around like a storm cloud all morning."
"He fired two security guards on the loading dock before lunch."
"If he catches you sniffing around the building, we’re both dead."
"Relax, you coward," Brandt sneered, hanging up without waiting for a reply.
He pocketed his phone and looked around my empty room one last time.
His eyes landed on an old framed photograph sitting on the bedside table.
It was a picture of me at sixteen, standing beside my father in front of his modest woodworking shop, both of us covered in sawdust and smiling.
Brandt picked up the frame, smashed the glass against the edge of the table, and shoved the photograph into his coat pocket.
"You think you can hide behind a desk, sweetheart?" Brandt muttered, grinding a shard of broken glass into the floorboards with his boot heel.
May you like
"I’ll collect every dime your old man owed me, plus interest for the inconvenience."
He slammed the door behind him and marched down the stairs, completely unaware that two plainclothes men sitting in an unmarked sedan across the street were already filming his every move.
