Chapter 29: Midnight Stitching

Evelyn's POV

The dry, tearing sound of Mrs. Thompson’s cough always sounded worst at one in the morning.

It leaked through the paper-thin wall separating her bedroom from the narrow kitchen, every wet rattle hitting me like a physical blow to my chest. I froze, my hand hovering over the worn oak table, the fine steel needle held tight between my thumb and forefinger.

I waited. One breath. Two. Three.

When the coughing finally subsided into a ragged, whistling exhale, I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding. The silence returned to the small apartment, heavy and cold, broken only by the rhythmic tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway and the distant whistle of the night train slicing through the city.

I looked down at the paper sitting beneath my brass thimble. It was the latest invoice from Saint Jude’s Clinic, printed on stiff white cardstock.

TOTAL DUE: $1,850.00. NOTICE: PHARMACEUTICAL SERVICES WILL BE DISCONTINUED EFFECTIVE OCTOBER 1ST PENDING PAYMENT.

October 1st was in three days.

My fingers tightened around the needle until the steel bit into my skin. Thirty-five years. That was how long Mrs. Thompson had spent hunched over the industrial sewing machines at the Crest Textile Mills down by the docks. Thirty-five years of breathing in fine cotton dust and diesel exhaust until her lungs turned to stiff, scarred glass.

She wasn't my mother by blood, but when my own parents succumbed to the winter fever twelve years ago, leaving a terrified ten-year-old on the steps of a parish house, it was Mrs. Thompson who brought me home. She had put a bowl of warm soup in my hands, sat me down by her small radiator, and taught me how to hold a hem straight. She had sacrificed her youth, her posture, and her lungs to feed me.

Now, her knuckles were too swollen with arthritis to grip a pair of shears, and her lungs were failing one agonizing day at a time. The factory had let her go six months ago with a fifty-dollar severance and a polite letter thanking her for her service.

They left her to rot. But I wouldn't.

I picked up the heavy wool coat resting in my lap—a rich, deep charcoal garment made of cashmere so soft it felt like liquid against my calloused fingertips. It belonged to a high-end alteration house uptown, the kind of place where a single button cost more than our weekly grocery budget. The head tailor there, a slimy man named Mr. Vance, knew I was desperate. He gave me the jobs his full-time staff refused to touch on tight deadlines: tedious hand-stitching, intricate lining repairs, and delicate embroidery work that took hours under dim light.

He paid me under the table, twenty cents on the dollar, taking eighty percent of the profit for himself. But cash was cash, and right now, cash kept Mrs. Thompson’s oxygen tank filled.

I leaned closer to the single oil lamp sitting on the edge of the table, squinting as I lined up the dark silk thread with the needle's eye. My eyes burned, the edges of my vision blurred with exhaustion. I had been awake since five yesterday morning, working my twelve-hour shift at the dry cleaners before coming home to start Vance’s late-night queue.

"Evelyn?"

The voice was faint, gravelly, drifting out from the bedroom doorway.

I looked up immediately, shoving the medical bill under a pile of scrap fabric before setting my work aside. "I'm here, Auntie. Why are you awake? Is the air machine rattling again?"

Mrs. Thompson stood in the doorframe, leaning heavily against the wooden casing. She looked so small inside her faded flannel nightgown, her gray hair braided loosely over one thin shoulder. Her skin had that translucent, waxy tint that made my stomach churn every time I saw it under direct light.

"You're going to ruin your eyes, child," she rasped, leaning forward with a shaky step. "Look at you. It’s past midnight. You have to open the shop at seven."

"I'm almost done," I lied smoothly, getting up to wrap an arm around her narrow waist. She felt weightless, like a bundle of dry twigs. "Just fixing a sleeve hem for a customer. Go back to bed. The draft is bad tonight."

"We don't need the extra money, Evie," she whispered, her hand trembling as she touched my cheek. Her palm was rough, covered in decades of old pin-prick scars. "I hear you up at night. I hear you sighing over those papers. I'm old. My time is coming, and I won't have you killing yourself to buy me a few more painful months."

The tears sprang to my eyes so fast and hot they nearly blinded me. I swallowed the lump in my throat, forcing a soft smile onto my face as I guided her back toward her bed.

"Don't talk like that," I murmured, tucking the heavy quilt around her frail shoulders. "You're not going anywhere. You're going to sit on the porch next summer and complain about my cooking, just like you always do. Now close your eyes."

She looked at me for a long moment, her faded blue eyes bright with a helpless, devastating grief. She knew I was lying. I knew she knew. But neither of us had the strength to shatter the quiet truce between us.

"You're too good for this world, Evelyn," she murmured, her eyelids fluttered shut as the sedative from her evening tea finally took hold. "Too gentle..."

I stayed by her side until her breathing deepened into a steady, albeit noisy, rhythm. Then I stepped back into the kitchen, shutting the bedroom door until only a thin crack remained open.

I sat back down at the table, picked up the needle, and worked.

One stitch. Two stitches. Pull the thread tight. Trim the excess.

By 2:30 AM, my back was a rigid pillar of white-hot pain, and my thumbs were numb. I smoothed down the lapel of the charcoal coat, checking the seamless hidden stitch along the shoulder line. It was perfect. Invisible. Even Vance wouldn't be able to tell where the fabric had been torn.

I reached into the canvas bag at my feet to grab the final piece of the night—a heavy, wrapped package Vance had handed me right before he locked up the boutique hours ago.

"This one came in from a private courier," Vance had muttered, not looking me in the eye as he pushed the dark paper-wrapped bundle across the counter. "No name on the order. Just a fat stack of bills and a note saying it needs to be repaired and dropped off at the West Pier warehouse by four in the morning. Touch nothing except the tear. Don't ask questions. You get three hundred dollars cash if it's done right."

Three hundred dollars. It was more than Vance usually gave me in a month. It was enough to cover the immediate installment for the clinic.

My fingers trembled as I sliced through the thick twine binding the package. The brown paper fell away, revealing a tailored suit jacket made of an extraordinary, obsidian-black silk wool. It was exquisitely made, the kind of bespoke craftsmanship reserved for the top one percent of the city—or the men who controlled them from the shadows.

As I lifted the heavy jacket onto the table, the scent hit me.

It wasn't the clean smell of lavender detergent or high-end cologne. It was the sharp, metallic tang of copper, mixed with the faint, unmistakable smell of gunpowder.

My pulse spiked, a sudden spike of cold adrenaline washing through my veins.

I turned the jacket over. High on the left side of the chest, right over where a man's heart would beat, the pristine black silk was shredded. A jagged, three-inch tear marring the expensive fabric.

And around the edges of the rip, the fabric was stiff, dark, and damp.

Blood.

My breath caught in my throat. I dropped the jacket as if it had burned me, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Vance hadn't given me an alteration job. He had made me an accomplice to a crime.

Pick it up, a cold, desperate voice whispered inside my head. Three hundred dollars. The clinic bill. Mrs. Thompson's life.

I forced my shaking hands to reach out and smooth the garment back over the wooden table. I couldn't afford a conscience. Not tonight. Not when the woman who saved my life was slowly suffocating thirty feet away.

I threaded my needle with black silk, my hands steadying under the sheer force of survival. I folded the torn edges inward, preparing to execute a blind weaver’s knot to pull the ruined fabric together.

As I reached inside the lining to reinforce the structural canvas, my fingers brushed against something hard tucked deep inside the inner pocket—something stiff, thin, and metallic.

I paused. I was supposed to fix the tear and put it away. Vance's warning echoed in my mind: Touch nothing except the tear.

My fingers twitched. Slowly, cautiously, I reached into the hidden lining slit and pulled the object out.

It was a heavy, sterling silver signet ring, caked in drying dark blood. Engraved across the face was a crest I recognized instantly—a coiled viper striking through a broken crown.

The crest of the Romanov Syndicate. The most dangerous, violent crime family in the state.

My blood ran ice-cold. I dropped the ring onto the table, where it landed with a loud, hollow clink.

Before I could even process the horror of what was sitting in my kitchen, a sharp, sudden sound shattered the quiet of the night.

Creak.

It wasn't from inside the apartment. It came from the fire escape right outside my kitchen window.

I froze, my gaze darting to the glass.

Shadows shifted against the frosted pane. Then came a quiet, heavy metallic click as the window lock was slowly, deliberately forced upward from the outside.

I scrambled backward, knocking my chair over with a loud crash.

The window swung open, letting in a gust of freezing night air, and a tall, looming figure stepped fluidly into the warm glow of my single oil lamp. He was drenched in shadow, a dark tailored coat draped over his broad shoulders, one hand pressed hard against his bleeding side.

He looked at the fallen chair, then at the black jacket on my table, and finally, his piercing, storm-gray eyes locked onto mine.

Slowly, with a terrifyingly calm movement, he reached inside his coat, pulled out a silenced handgun, and pointed it directly at my chest.

"You have five seconds to tell me why you're holding my coat," his voice rasped, smooth, dangerous, and dripping with blood, "before I put a bullet through that pretty throat."