Daniel’s breathing hitched.
“They didn’t miss,” he whispered. “They warned.”
Anna frowned.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It will,” he said. “If you turn that phone on, it pings. If it pings, they know where I am. And if they know—”
He stopped, coughing hard, bl00d staining his lips again.
Anna waited.
“And if they know?” she pressed.
His gaze shifted toward the babies.
“They finish it,” he said.
Silence filled the pantry, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator units outside and the uneven rhythm of rain against the building.
Anna looked down at the phone again.
Her whole life had been about surviving small, contained disasters. Bad homes. Bad luck. Bad timing.
This was something else.
This was stepping into a story where people didn’t play fair and the rules didn’t protect you.
“Anna,” he said suddenly.
She blinked. “I didn’t tell you my name.”
A faint, almost ghost of a smile touched his mouth.
“You said it. Alley. Before I passed out.”
She didn’t remember that.
Or maybe she did, buried under adrenaline.
“Anna,” he repeated. “If you help me… you don’t walk away from this.”
Her grip tightened on the phone.
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s not,” he said. “It’s a warning.”May be an image of baby
The babies whimpered again, softer now, exhausted.
Anna looked at them.
Two small lives, completely unaware of the lines being drawn around them.
Then she looked at Daniel.
A stranger with a gun, bleeding on flour sacks, talking like the city itself had teeth.
And finally, she looked at the phone.
One press, and everything would change.
One press, and maybe everything would end.
Her thumb moved.
Stopped.
Moved again.
She exhaled slowly, then turned the phone off completely and set it on the shelf.
“No calls,” she said.
Daniel closed his eyes, something like relief passing through his face before the pain took over again.
“Good,” he whispered.
Anna grabbed more towels, pressing harder against the wound, forcing herself to focus.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “You’re still not d!3ing on my floor.”
Outside, somewhere beyond the rain and the neon glow, a siren wailed faintly in the distance.
Anna froze.
Daniel’s eyes snapped open.
“That’s not for us,” she said quickly, though she wasn’t sure if she believed it.
He listened anyway, every muscle in his body going tense despite the bl00d loss.
The siren faded.
But the silence that followed felt worse.May be an image of baby
Anna swallowed.
“What now?” she asked.
Daniel stared at her for a long moment, as if weighing something far heavier than trust.
Then he spoke.
“You keep me alive until sunrise,” he said. “And I make sure you never regret it.”
Anna let out a breath that trembled despite her effort to steady it.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
