Chapter 4 - The Platinum Watch and the Lost Locket
Minna collapsed beside the massive stranger, her entire body shaking with violent, uncontrollable shudders as hypothermia threatened to claim her. The man coughed violently, expelling dark river water from his lungs before rolling sluggishly onto his back. Even half-drowned, injured, and covered in river silt, he radiated an undeniable physical presence—a heavy, menacing authority that Minna could instinctively sense without knowing a single detail about him. A heavy platinum watch, catching the faint glint of distant streetlamps, remained firmly strapped to his thick wrist; she suspected with absolute certainty that single timepiece was worth more than every vehicle, home, and possession her family had owned over her entire lifetime.
In the distance, the wail of approaching police sirens cut through the damp Chicago air, their red and blue lights beginning to dance across the underside of the overpass. Panic flared anew in Minna’s chest, and she immediately began scrambling backward on her hands and knees. The man’s eyes snapped open, and with surprising speed, a large hand shot out and caught her ankle in a grip like a vice. “Wait,” he rasped, blinking congealed blood and river muck out of his eyes as he stared at her. For the very first time, he looked directly at her with acute clarity, his gaze sweeping over her frayed denim jeans, hollow, exhausted cheeks, waterlogged military jacket, and wide, terrified eyes. “Who are you?” he demanded softly. “I’m nobody,” Minna gasped, yanking her leg free from his grasp with a desperate twist. “I wasn’t here.” He tried to hoist himself up, wincing as his ribs protested. “My name is Dante,” he breathed, his chest heaving. “You need to know—” “I don’t want to know anything,” Minna interrupted, scrambling up the steep, muddy embankment barefoot, her shoes forgotten in the muck. She grabbed her discarded backpack from where she had dropped it and vanished down a labyrinth of dark, forgotten downtown alleys just as the first squad car screeched onto the bridge above. She did not realize, in her blind panic, that the cheap silver locket she always wore around her neck had snapped off during the struggle in the water. It fell silently into the mud, landing mere inches from Dante Moretti’s bloodstained fingers—holding the very last photograph of her mother.
