Chapter 3 - THE SOUR DOUGH AND THE BROKEN HAND
Enzo did not reach for the gun. To draw blood here, on day one, would burn his cover before he even understood what debt Desmond had died trying to erase. Instead, he gripped the cold push-rims of the wheelchair.
With deliberate clumsiness, he rolled off the curb. The left wheel buckled slightly, clattering violently into the gutter. He let out a loud, pathetic cry, tipping sideways just enough to send his metal cup and his four coins bouncing across the wet asphalt, rolling directly beneath the lifted bumper of the black truck.
"Help!" Enzo rasped, pitching his voice into a cracked, desperate whine. "My leg! Please, sir, don't step on my cup!"
The goon with the bat, startled by the noise, turned around with an expression of pure disgust. "What the hell is this circus?"
Clara used the distraction instantly. She slipped past the men, darted inside the bakery, and slammed the deadbolt home.
The man with the bat cursed, spitting tobacco juice onto the sidewalk, then marched toward Enzo. He was wide-shouldered, thick-necked, and smelled of stale beer. "You got bad timing, cripple. Get this piece of junk out of the road before I flatten it with the bumper."
Enzo lay half-sprawled across the wheelchair frame, his face tilted down toward the pavement. "I dropped my quarters, boss," Enzo whimpered, groveling with an exaggerated tremble. "Four quarters. That’s my supper."
"Here’s your supper," the man sneered, raising his heavy boot to kick Enzo’s twisted left wheel.
Enzo’s eyes went dead. In the split second before the boot connected with the spokes, Enzo’s right hand moved like a striking viper.
He didn't draw the gun. He reached up, caught the man's thick work boot by the heel with his left hand, and drove the heel of his own right palm directly into the side of the man’s knee joint.
It was a quiet, sickening sound—like a green branch snapping under wet snow.
The goon’s leg bent inward at an impossible angle. A strangled scream tore out of his throat, but before the sound could fully bloom, Enzo surged upward from the wheelchair seat—not paralyzed at all—and slammed his thumb hard into the nerve cluster behind the man’s ear. The goon’s eyes rolled back, and he collapsed limp into the slush without another breath.
The second man, still holding the manila envelope by the truck's tailgate, froze in absolute shock. His hand went inside his jacket for iron.
Enzo stepped over the groaning, unconscious brute on the asphalt. In two long, silent strides, he closed the distance. Before the second man could clear his holster, Enzo’s left hand pinned the man’s wrist against his own ribs, while Enzo's right fingers seized the man’s windpipe, squeezing just enough to cut off all oxygen.
Enzo shoved him violently against the side of the truck. The metal panel dented with a loud thud.
"Who sent you?" Enzo whispered. His voice was no longer that of a beggar. It was the calm, subterranean voice of the man who ran the Boston docks.
The goon gagged, his face turning the color of an eggplant. His eyes widened as he looked into Enzo’s face—recognizing the bone structure, the dead gray eyes, the complete absence of fear.
"V-Vance," the man wheezed, spit bubbling on his lips. "Local loan shark... working for... for out of town..."
"What out of town?" Enzo pressed his thumb half an inch deeper into the carotid artery.
"Boston!" the man gasped, terrified. "A guy named Sal! Boston money!"
Sal. Salvatore Bianchi. Uncle Marco’s personal enforcer.
Enzo felt an electric shock of rage course through his spine, but his expression remained carved of marble. Marco wasn't just tracking Enzo; Marco had owned this town's misery for years.
Enzo snatched the manila envelope from the man's limp fingers, tore the goon's snub-nosed revolver from his jacket, and dropped the weapon into the deep storm drain by the curb with a splash. Then he shoved the man hard into the driver’s seat.
"Put your partner in the truck," Enzo said softly. "Drive back to Vance. Tell him if he or any man from Boston touches this bakery again, I will peel his skin off while he’s still breathing. Do you understand me?"
The man nodded frantically, weeping from the sheer terror radiating off Enzo. He scrambled out, dragged his broken-legged companion into the passenger side, and threw the truck into reverse, peeling rubber down Main Street in an erratic panic.
Silence returned to the street, broken only by the hum of the bakery's ventilation fan.
Enzo stood alone in the street. He looked down at the manila envelope. Inside were foreclosure notices, water liens, and a promissory note signed twenty years ago by Joseph Rossi, bearing an interest rate so predatory it was legally impossible. Attached to the back was a carbon copy of a wire transfer receipt from a bank in downtown Boston.
Enzo folded the papers and tucked them into his coat. He walked back to the wheelchair, sat down, adjusted the bent footrest, and resumed his slouch.
The deadbolt of the bakery clicked open.
Clara emerged, clutching an iron fire poker, her eyes wide as dinner plates. She looked down the empty street where the truck had just vanished, then down at the tire tracks in the slush, and finally at Enzo, who was quietly picking up his metal tin cup from the gutter.
"Where... where did they go?" she whispered, breathless.
Enzo looked up, his face once again weary, vacant, and harmless. "A police cruiser turned the corner up on Third Street," he lied smoothly. "They got spooked and took off. Threw the other fellow in the seat because he slipped on the ice."
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Clara stared at him. She looked at the blood smudge on the slush, then down at Enzo’s placid face. Her chest heaved. "Ice didn't do that. I heard a bone break from behind the glass."
"Winter's hard on bones," Enzo muttered, holding out his cup. "Did you bring that coffee?"
