EVELYN
A scream tore from my throat, wild and raw.
"No! No!!"
My voice bounced off the empty streets, swallowed by the quietness. The power bike roared ahead, carrying my life with it. My bag. The wristwatch inside it wasn't just any watch, but the key to everything I had desperately been counting on.
"They can't go with it!" I screamed again, my breath ragged with my lungs burning with each desperate inhale. "Help!!"
No one answered. In a city that was meant to be teeming with life on this day, there wasn't a soul to witness my undoing. The universe had emptied the streets just for this moment of perfect humiliation.
The street was eerily deserted. Just me, my fierce heartbeat, and the old man beside me with his face frozen in that same stunned expression. He stood there as if time had halted, watching the thief vanish into the distance. A gray-haired statue, useless in my moment of need. His weathered face reflected shock, but what good was that to me now?
I wasn't waiting. I ran.
