Chapter 3 - Maya’s War
Her name was Maya Lin.
She was twenty-four years old, and she lived in a world where sleep was a luxury she couldn't afford.
Every morning at 5:00 a.m., Maya woke up in Apartment 4B, put on her faded blue scrubs, and walked twelve blocks to the municipal hospital where her mother had been lying in a ventilator-assisted coma for six months. Her mother’s medical bills were a towering mountain of debt that grew larger every thirty days.
By 2:00 p.m., Maya shifted to her second job—working the register at a 24-hour convenience store three streets over, where the glass windows were bulletproof and the customers were mostly ghosts, addicts, or low-level syndicate enforcers.
And then there was the third obligation—the one that kept her awake at night, staring at the peeling plaster on her ceiling.
Her younger sister, Lily.
Lily was nineteen, reckless, and desperate to break out of the slum. Two months ago, she had accepted a loan from a loan shark named Eddie "The Vice" Vance—one of Marcus Webb’s mid-level collection lieutenants. Lily had taken five thousand dollars to pay for a scam modeling contract. Now, Eddie claimed she owed thirty thousand dollars with interest, and he had pulled Lily into a backroom gambling club on 12th Street, holding her passport and forcing her to work off the debt as an un-paid hostess until the principal was cleared.
Maya paid Eddie eight hundred dollars every week—every single penny she earned from both jobs—just to keep Eddie from moving Lily to a brothel in the East District.
On the seventh night after Tristan arrived, Maya knocked on his door again.
This time, Tristan opened the door before she could set the bowl down.
Maya jumped, her wide dark eyes flashing with surprise. She was wearing a threadbare grey hoodie, her face pale, heavy dark circles under her eyes, her long dark hair tied in a loose braid over her shoulder. She looked small, fragile, and utterly exhausted.
Tristan sat in his wheelchair, his black shirt unbuttoned at the collar, his dark eyes fixed on her face like twin iron spikes.
"Why are you doing this?" Tristan asked flatly.
Maya blinked, holding the ceramic bowl between her small, calloused hands. "Doing what?"
"Bringing food to a stranger," Tristan said, gesturing coldly at his chair. "You don't know me. I could be a fugitive. I could be a violent criminal."
Maya looked at his crippled legs, then up at the pale, scarred contour of his jawline, and finally into his cold, dead eyes. She didn't flinch. She had seen real monsters—men like Eddie Vance who smiled while threatening to ruin young girls. The man in front of her didn't look like a predator. He looked like a man who had already died and forgotten to lie down.
"You look like you're starving," Maya said simply, stepping forward and setting the bowl into his lap. "And I had extra rice. My mother always said if you have enough to cook a pot, you have enough to share with the person next door."
Tristan looked down at the bowl, then back at her. "Your mother was naive."
Maya’s eyes flashed with a sudden, quiet fire. "My mother is dying in St. Jude’s Hospital. But she wasn't naive. She was human. You should try it sometime."
She turned on her heel and walked back to her apartment, her door slamming shut with a decisive click.
Tristan sat in the hallway shadow, the warm bowl resting on his useless knees, her words echoing in his mind like a gunshot.
May you like
You should try it sometime.
For the first time in three weeks, Tristan Wolfe didn't think about Marcus Webb or Celeste. He thought about the small girl in the threadbare hoodie who looked a monster in the eye and offered him rice.
