All Chapters of The Vision She Hid: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

Eventually things got quieter, as they usually do on such occasions. The yellowish smoke that lingered had the personality of a mad uncle—loud dressed, overstaying, and smelling like the wrong decade. It clung to the chandelier, which still swung lazily over the long oak table, but was considering early retirement. Blood was still drying on the wood, tacky and dark, the kind that remembered the noise it came with. Chairs sat still but crooked, a stack of old men in expensive suits wore the same crookedness in their backs, and the air hummed with that post-battle tinnitus that reminds you your nerves are still there.I’d washed my hands and that sickening smell wouldn’t go away, that’s for sure. I felt the blood ghosting my fingers, a memory my skin couldn’t get rid of. Big Elky stood near the head of the table, shoulders soft the way cats look soft—until you feel the claws. On the wall behind him, a map of territories and routes had slid askew. Someone had punched a hole clean throug

The chandelier had finally stopped fidgeting. It hung there like a veteran who’d learned better than to flinch at loud noises. My best friend in the room, a dusty crown of dim bulbs thinking about sainthood. The oak table below it now looked like a butcher’s conscience—cleaned in a hurry, not that convincingly. Blood sat in the seams where the wood joined, a stubborn punctuation telling the rushed sentences to mind their manners. Someone had wiped the surface with linen that used to be white and now had a future as vital evidence. The survived elders of Jennings clan leaned around that table the way old vines lean on a fence: too frightened to stand for themselves, too proud to climb under it.My father lifted his hands, palms out, the international sign for I come in peace and also for Don’t shoot the man you may need to clean your mess. The room eased, the way a sore jaw eases when the dentist finally stops talking about flossing. Even the smoke took a breath. Nicos could calm a rio

By the third morning my childhood house had learned our breathing. Old timber does that, if it likes you—it eases the groan out of stairs you take too often, and lets doors you shouldn’t open close in silence. The olives in the courtyard made their slow green gossip in the breeze and the fountain tapped its patient knuckles against the warm stone, counting time like a polite creditor. In the guest room just off my father’s library, the air had the clean, mean smell of antiseptic sitting on top of books and leather.Elky’s face was getting color back, which is to say he looked less like a statue about to reveal a miracle and more like a sinner who’d found a comfy chair. The bandage under his shirt pulled when he breathed, a tidy rectangle of pain that insisted on good posture. He had accepted it the way he accepts everything he can’t outsmart: with a grunt, a joke, and the quiet fury of a guy who knows biology charges interest if neglected.The grumpy family doctor—Theo Karamannis, our

The storage place had a hallway that smelled like damp concrete and dirty secrets. Yannis walked ahead of us with the bored menace of a man who could bend a door with his left shoulder. Andrew ghosted behind us, hands in pockets, eyes on all corners at once. Marta’s heels clicked out a rhythm that told the future to come but at a reasonable pace.Unit 17B’s paint was the color of old gunmetal. The lock took the key like it was paid money for it. The door rolled up, complaining like a choir of lifetime smokers.Inside: a busted metal shelf, an old trunk, a cardboard box with a slit down one side, and a portable projector case. The air had that stale, sweet smell of old paper that’s learned to lie elegantly.I stepped in while the others kept the distance. Flicked the trunk. It protested wildly. I opened it anyway. Clothes. Men’s, then women’s. Not my style, not anyone’s decent. The kind of anonymous fabric you buy when you know you’ll be leaving fast. Beneath the second layer, a plasti

The engine came up the hill and died out like a cough that didn’t want doctor’s attention. The sound bounced off the church wall and slipped into the water. The docks went back to being docks—tar, rope, diesel, and dead fish. Nets lay in heaps like tired laundry. A gull stood on a bollard and watched us without much respect.Maria pulled her jean jacket tighter. “That’s the second truck I’ve heard doing that,” she said. “Up, down, stop. Like a metronome.”“Yeah. They have bad rhythm,” Andrew said. He had his hands in his pockets and his collar turned up. He looked like a man trying to be part of a wall.I watched the hill. A thin line of lights ran along the ridge like a dotted sentence. It didn’t say much. The air was heavy, damp, and still warm. I kept feeling salt on my lips. A ferry horn moaned somewhere out in the dark and a smaller boat answered.“We don’t follow engines,” I said. “Engines don’t love us back.”“So what do we follow?” Maria asked.“People,” I said. “They leak in