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Author: Thekla Jackiv
last update Last Updated: 2025-06-25 07:44:52

The door was locked pretty well. The metal chair was screwed to the floor. It was probably possible to unscrew it, but not if your are doped and have no screw driver. It looked like a hard work even for a guy like Elky, it meant to be. I sat on the mattress feeling every spring with my bum. I had an idea how to put those harsh pieces of metal to a better use. I ripped the stripy fabric off and got rid of stuff that pretended to be soft padding. There was a nice large spring attached to the slight frame, in fact there were four of them, but one would do me. It was made of thick black metal and was about ten centimeters in diameter and thirty centimeters long. I worked hard to break one of them away from the frame. I picked the most worn out spring and spent good ten minutes on the job. I ended up with bleeding fingers and sharp piece of metal. It swished nicely as well, and could do some damage if used smart. I was thirsty, and had a dry cough, but I was determined not to drink from th
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  • The Vision She Hid   142

    Something woke me up before the sound did.Not a noise. A slight change in the air, or maybe just a foreign smell. The room shifted its weight, the way a house does when a stranger steps inside it. My eyes opened into the dark and for a second I didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered the bed, the curtains, the Napoleon furniture, the lie of safety. Elky’s arm was still heavy across my waist. His breathing was deep and even.The air smelled faintly of champagne and hotel soap. But under all that there was another smell, thin and sharp, like rubbing alcohol.I stayed still and listened. Nothing. Just an old lavish building holding its breath.I was wrong. A hotel never holds its breath. It rattles, it hums, it leaks life through thin walls. This room was too quiet, like somebody had turned down the volume.My eyes went to the doors. The main door. The bathroom. The connecting door, panelled to look like part of the wall. Too many ways in.A soft click came from somewhere near the en

  • The Vision She Hid   141

    The suite Lucia booked us was perfectly nice at a first glance. Then it started to look like it had been waiting for somebody daft like us to make a grave mistake in it.It had super high ceilings with gold mouldings, tall wooden windows with deep green velvet curtains thick enough to smother a scream. The antique furniture had survived a few brutal regimes and learned not to look flashy. It was the kind of room that pretended history was about taste and not violence. We didn’t buy it.The door closed behind us with a sound far too soft to trust.Elky didn’t say anything right away. Neither did I. We stood there for a second, just long enough to let the silence absorb us. The city murmured outside, distant engines, human voices rising and falling, Palermo doing what it always did: living like tomorrow may not be on the cards.I crossed the room and dropped my purse on an acacia console table. Elky went to the window and checked it up out of habit. It was not paranoia. Habits like tha

  • The Vision She Hid   140

    Palermo at night looked like it had finished the Friday dinner and was now deciding what to do with the fish bones.The car had tinted windows and that faint new-leather smell that always made me think of dirty money disinfectant. The marina lights slid by our windows in long wet streaks. Inside, everything was muted, softened, as if the city had been wrapped in silk cloth and told us to behave.Elky sat beside me in the back seat. The driver was in front, a local low-key gangster Nicos had arranged for us last minute. That usually meant the guy was either reliable or disposable. We could do with some steady driving that night: the guy drove like he knew the streets too personally and thought the police was just a rumor. Her was in his late forties, with a face that had learned to stay neutral early in life and never forgot the lesson. He had olive skin, pleasant aftershave, and a jaw that had taken a few punches in its time. His eyes were almost black and steady, the kind that looked

  • The Vision She Hid   139

    The room felt stuffy. Not because anybody moved in but because the air gave up circulating around rude people. The champagne sweated like it owed money to a gangster squad. The sashimi was starting to shine in a way that made your appetite shrink. The lawyers didn’t blink anymore; they looked awake in that reptile way men get when they smell a fat contract forming in all that cigarette smoke.Lucia watched Elky like he was a chess piece she hadn’t used yet. Elky’s jaw was getting tight. His shoulders had a stiffness I knew too well. The kind that says a guy is one shove from putting his fist into something expensive.“Ok, ok, mother. Lets be straight with each other. You spread the results of fake trials,” he said. “You faked scientific data. You bloody faked everything. And you expect us to trust you?”Eljy’s voice had a wide range, but now he kept it low. It sounded worse than shouting. Shouting is like a storm. A calm fury like his was a concealed knife.Lucia gave him a long, pati

  • The Vision She Hid   138

    I have to say, the conversation got kinda more exciting. It wasn’t getting any friendlier though. The toro sat on Lucia’s plate like a bribe nobody wanted to take. The champagne sweated in the bucket. Lucia watched me over the rim of her glass. And the two lawyers watched Lucia like two beta males watching their alpha making a fool of himself. Elky, too, watched the space in front of him like someone had taken his past and hung it there for inspection.“Ok, ok. Since you’re in an evidence mood,” Lucia said at last, “we might as well look at the ghost you’ve been chasing all this time.”She turned her head a notch. The French lawyer got the signal and reached somewhere behind his chair. He lifted a slim black tablet case with his two pale fingers, the way you handle something contaminated with deadly poison. He laid it on the table between us, rotated it so it faced me, and tapped the screen.The tablet woke up. A familiar header slid into view. Δ-12 ADVERSE EVENT SUMMARY. Underneath,

  • The Vision She Hid   137

    The champagne was cold enough to make a silver bucket sweat. That was about the only cold thing in the room. The heat was in the air, and it was about to melt down our confidence big time. Stunning Lucia Jennings lifted her glass, still smiling that soft, reasonable smile that had signed more death warrants than the Roman procurator. The two lawyers watched her like altar boys waiting for the bell to ring. Elky sat beside me with his hands flat on his knees, the way men usually sit when they want everyone to know they’re not reaching for a gun yet.I set my little LV purse on my lap and fussed with the clasp like I thought I might freshen my lipstick up. My thumb found a tiny button inside the clasp. One click. No light, no sound. Just a small vibration that told me the mic was awake and ready to earn its upkeep.Risky move if Lucia was smart enough to notice. Then again, if she had noticed I was as good as dead. Then the recording would be the least of my problems.I hung the purse

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