Chapter 3 - The Midnight Walk
The wind off Lake Michigan had turned bitter by the time Lucy clocked out at 11:00 PM.
The walk from The Oak Diner to her apartment building on the south side took twenty-two minutes if she walked fast, twenty-five if the icy gusts forced her to tuck her chin into her coat and shuffle sideways. Tonight, the air felt like shards of glass against her cheeks.
She pulled her thin wool coat tighter around her throat, her fingers digging into her pockets. Her right hand brushed against the silver pen, its cold metal a sharp contrast to the feverish heat building in her mind as she thought about Mason.
When she finally reached the dilapidated brick apartment complex, the lobby smelled faintly of boiled cabbage, damp concrete, and radiator steam. She climbed the two flights of stairs—the second-floor landing light was burnt out again, plunging the hallway into deep shadows—and unlocked the heavy wooden door of Mrs. Alvarez’s apartment.
The air inside was thick and sweet with the smell of eucalyptus vapor and chamomile tea.
Mrs. Alvarez sat in her floral armchair, nodding off with a knitted blanket draped over her knees. On the sofa opposite her, six-year-old Mason was curled in a tight ball, his chest rising and falling with a shallow, whistling rattle that sounded like dry leaves scraping across pavement.
At the sound of the door closing, Mrs. Alvarez snapped awake, her dark eyes instantly alert.
“Lucy,” the older woman whispered, pushing herself up with a groan of stiff joints. “Thank God. He finally stopped coughing around ten, but he’s burning up again. I tried the cool sponge baths, but the fever won't break below a hundred and two.”
Lucy dropped her canvas bag by the door and rushed across the room. She dropped to her knees beside the sofa, pressing the back of her hand against Mason’s forehead. His skin was scorching, slick with a fine sheen of cold sweat.
Mason stirred, his heavy eyelids fluttering open. His green eyes—so like her own, but hollowed out by illness—looked up at her with a heartbreaking, apologetic trust.
“Mommy?” he whispered, his voice cracking into a dry cough. “I tried to be good for Mrs. Alvarez. I didn't make noise.”
“You are always good, baby,” Lucy choked out, smoothing his tangled brown hair back from his damp forehead. She pressed a soft kiss to his temple, fighting desperately against the rising tide of panic in her throat. “You rest. Mommy’s here now.”
Mrs. Alvarez walked over, handing Lucy a small plastic medicine cup filled with generic pink cough syrup. “I gave him the last dose of the store-bought stuff an hour ago. But Lucy... we ran out. And the cough medicine alone isn't doing anything. He needs that prescription inhaler from the clinic. The one the doctor prescribed last month.”
Lucy swallowed hard, the taste of ash filling her mouth.
The prescription at the pharmacy down on 4th Street cost eighty-four dollars.
After paying Mrs. Alvarez her weekly twenty for babysitting, and setting aside thirty for the electric bill, Lucy had exactly nine dollars and forty-two cents left in her purse. And tonight, after an eight-hour double shift running herself ragged for rude travelers and wealthy executives, her total tips—thanks to the man in the black suit—had amounted to twenty-four dollars and fifty cents.
She was fifty dollars short.
“I’ll... I’ll figure it out,” Lucy said, though her voice sounded hollow even to her own ears. “I can call the clinic in the morning. Maybe they have a sample, or a payment plan.”
“Clinics don't give payment plans for asthma inhalers, honey,” Mrs. Alvarez said gently, placing a weathered hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “They want cash upfront. You know that.”
Lucy stood up, walking toward the tiny kitchen alcove so Mason wouldn't hear the desperation in her voice. She pulled her apron off, and as she tossed it onto the counter, the silver pen and the folded receipt fell out of her pocket, clattering against the Formica top.
She stared down at them.
The pen gleamed under the harsh fluorescent light of the kitchen. A.V.
She picked it up. It had weight. It had substance. In a pawnshop down on Lincoln Avenue, a pen like this—solid sterling silver body, custom-engraved, probably German-made—might fetch fifty or sixty dollars. Maybe more to the right collector who didn't ask questions about where a diner waitress got executive stationery.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. Stealing. Even from a man who had humiliated her, who had left her zero dollars and a philosophical lecture written in black ink, taking his property crossed a line she had sworn she would never cross.
He left you zero, a dark voice whispered in her head. He looked at your starving child and decided you were ‘enough’ with nothing. He wouldn't even miss it.
Lucy closed her eyes, her thumb tracing the engraved initials.
“Mommy?” Mason’s weak voice drifted from the living room. “Can I have some water?”
Lucy opened her eyes. She set the pen down on the counter, her hands shaking. She couldn't steal. It wasn't about him; it was about her. If she became cruel to survive, then poverty had won entirely. It had taken her husband, her savings, her health, and her peace of mind. She refused to let it take her integrity.
Instead, she picked up the receipt with the zero-dollar tip.
She unfolded it. Underneath the bold, insulting Enough, she noticed something she hadn't seen in the dim lighting of the diner.
Pressed into the paper near the bottom edge, right where the restaurant's thermal printer had jammed for a microsecond, was an indentation. Not ink. An embossing.
A faint, embossed logo of a private aviation firm based out of Chicago, along with a secondary address printed in microscopic gray font near the staple line: Vance Global Holdings, Suite 4400, North Michigan Ave.
Lucy stared at the address.
Vance Global Holdings.
She didn't know much about the stock market or corporate mergers, but even in Milwaukee, people knew the name Vance. They owned logistics firms, real estate portfolios, and medical supply distribution networks across three states.
And the man who had sat in Booth Six, sipping black coffee and handing out zero-dollar verdicts like a modern-day king, wasn't just a wealthy traveler.
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He was Aiden Vance.
And tomorrow morning, Lucy Bennett was going to find out if a billionaire had a heart, or if he was truly as cold as his ink.
