Chapter 3 - Coals And Cash
I walked back out into the wide sitting room where the man stood by the cold stone hearth, striking a match to light the kindling. The flames caught quickly, licking up around dry oak logs with a sharp crackle that broke the heavy silence of the room. He tossed the burned match into the grate and turned to face me, resting one hand casually against the stone mantelpiece.
"You didn't have to get in that car," he said, watching me with those dark, unreadable eyes. "You could have stayed in the lounge and let my men handle the aftermath."
"Handle it how?" I asked, crossing my arms over my white shirt, feeling the lingering warmth of the boy still radiating against my palms. "By clearing the room and pretending none of this happened? He was shaking, and you were sitting there counting hundred-dollar bills like currency could buy him back his parents."
A slow, humorless smile touched the corner of his mouth, though his eyes remained sharp. "Money buys quiet. Quiet buys time. And time is the only thing keeping anyone alive in my line of work."
"He doesn't need time," I said, stepping closer to the warmth of the fire. "He needs someone who isn't leaving when the shift ends. That's why he grabbed my apron."
The man looked down at his own tattooed fingers, turning a heavy silver ring around his left index finger. "My name is Julian."
"Sarah," I answered after a brief pause, refusing to look away from him.
"Sarah," he repeated, testing the word on his tongue as if it were a foreign object. He walked over toward a small sideboard where a crystal decanter of whiskey sat alongside several neatly stacked bundles of banded hundred-dollar bills. He didn't pour a drink; instead, he rested his palm flat against the stacks of cash. "People in my world don't stay, Sarah. They take what they can carry and they run when the floor drops out."
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"Then maybe you're standing in the wrong room," I said quietly, gesturing toward the bedroom where the boy slept. "Because he's not running anywhere."
Julian stared at me for a long, suspended moment, the firelight catching the sharp planes of his jawline and the dark ink winding down past his cuff. The tension in the room shifted, turning from hostile standoff into a fragile, unspoken truce.
