Chapter 7 - Moving Day on the West Side and the End of the Groaning Radiator
By Friday afternoon, the third-floor apartment on West Madison Street looked as if it had already been abandoned for a decade.
The boxes stacked by the door were few—mostly clothes, a handful of children's books with chewed-up corners, and Mr. Buttons, who was currently clutched tightly in Mia’s arms as she sat on an empty mattress watching two men in dark suits carry her plastic kitchen set down the narrow stairwell.
Clara stood in the center of the tiny, peeling kitchen for the last time.
The radiator was groaning its familiar, injured-animal song, pumping out dry, clanking heat that smelled of old rust and dust.
She ran her hand over the chipped Formica countertop where she had calculated so many impossible budgets, where she had cried herself to sleep after Mia fell asleep, and where she had whispered a thousand silent prayers asking for just one break.
The break had come.
Delivered in a black Mercedes by a mafia syndicate boss who believed human kindness was a security protocol.
"Mommy!" Mia called out from the hallway, her voice echoing off the bare walls. "The nice suit-men say my pink socks fit in the big box!"
Clara took one last breath of the West Side air, turned off the kitchen light, and walked out the door without looking back.
Downstairs waiting at the curb was not their usual rattling second-hand sedan—which had been quietly towed and replaced with a reliable, late-model sedan already registered in Clara’s name—but a sleek black SUV with tinted windows.
Viktor held the rear door open for them, nodding politely as Clara lifted Mia into her booster seat.
"Welcome to your new life, Miss Bennett," Viktor said, his stone face softening just a fraction as Mia waved Mr. Buttons at him.
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"Thank you, Viktor," Clara said softly, sliding into the leather interior.
As the SUV pulled away from the curb and headed north toward Lincoln Park, Clara watched the gritty, gray tenements of the West Side fade into the afternoon haze, feeling as though she had just crossed an invisible border from one lifetime into another.
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