Kane chuckled, a mean sound. "We're not the ones who put her in," he said. "But it'd be a shame if her treatment got… interrupted."
Dario's tone never sharpened, but the words did. "Hospitals are businesses. People who pay on time get medicine. People who don't… don't."
He folded his hands again.
"You don't want calls like that, Mr. Cole. You don't want them saying, 'Sorry, we had to move your sister off the good meds. Sorry, we had to discharge her early. Sorry, something got complicated, she didn't make it through the night.'"
Ethan's hand curled into a fist on his thigh. His nails bit into his palm.
He thought of Sam's last text. They're talking about dropping my meds… I'm sorry.
He thought of her laugh when she was a kid, jumping off the dockyard into water so cold it snapped your lungs. Of the last time he'd seen her shoulders without a hospital gown, muscles gone thin.
"You're fucking scum," he said quietly.
Kane took a half step forward, but Dario lifted a hand, and he stopped.
"Language," Dario chided gently. "We're offering you a way out of a very bad situation."
He stood, adjusting his coat.
"You lost something of ours," he said. "So now you belong to us until you pay it back. Simple math."
Ethan made himself meet his eyes. "What if I do? Work it off. Then what?"
Dario's smile was quick and humorless. "Then you'll know better than to lose anything again."
He moved toward the door, Kane falling in behind him.
"Be at the Rusty Anchor tomorrow at nine," Dario said over his shoulder. "Back alley. We'll see what kind of worker you are when the cranes are turned off."
Kane paused in the doorway, looking back at Ethan like he was already a corpse.
"Don't be late," he said. "And don't be stupid."
Then they were gone.
The door shut. The sound of the rain came back in a dull roar.
Harris sagged in his chair like someone had cut his strings.
"I didn't have a choice," he muttered, not quite looking at Ethan. "They wanted a head. Someone had to take it."
Ethan stared at him for a long moment. He could imagine crossing the room, dragging Harris over the desk, breaking his nose like every guy on the night shift whispered about. It would feel good for about ten seconds.
It wouldn't change a goddamn thing.
"Sure you didn't," Ethan said, voice dead. "Enjoy your bonus."
He walked out before Harris could answer.
The city looked different once you'd had a gun held to your life without anyone actually pointing it.
The bus ride to the hospital felt longer than usual. Maybe because Ethan spent every stop calculating—rent, food, overdue bills, Sam's meds—stacking numbers in his head like crates until they towered over him.
By the time he stepped out into the sour, over‑bleached smell of the hospital lobby, he'd burned through anger, numbness, and come back around to something cold and focused.
He signed his name on the visitors' sheet with a hand that barely shook and let the elevator rattle him up to Sam's floor.
The ward was almost quiet. Flickering TV in one room. Someone coughing two doors down. A nurse at the station scrolling on her phone.
Sam's room door was half‑open. He knocked once with his knuckles as he pushed it wider.
Sam lay propped up against too-flat pillows, hospital gown swallowing her frame. Her hair was twisted into a messy knot on top of her head, wisps curling around a face that was still more teenager than adult. Dark circles bruised the skin under her eyes, but when she saw him, they lit up in a way that made his chest hurt worse than any of Kane's fists could've managed.
"Ethan," she said, breaking into a grin. "You look like shit."
He snorted, stepping in. "Love you too, Sammy."
He dropped into the plastic chair by her bed. The vinyl creaked like everything else in the place.
She wrinkled her nose. "You're dripping on the floor. Did the ocean attack you?"
"Storm hit the dock," he said. "Almost got flattened by a container. Normal night."
Her smile faded a little. "You okay?"
"Still alive," he said. "Harris'll have to try harder if he wants to get rid of me."
She made a face at the foreman's name. "He's an asshole."
"Language," Ethan said automatically.
She laughed. It came out smaller than he wanted, but it was there.
He let himself look her over, like taking inventory. The IV in her arm. The monitor leads disappearing under the gown. The way her collarbones stood out too sharp. The way her fingers picked absently at the blanket, restless energy with nowhere to go.
"Hospital called today," she said, like it was a small thing. "Sorry if I freaked you out."
He shrugged like it was nothing. "They always call. We're fine."
Her eyes searched his face. "They sounded serious this time. The nurse said something about 'last extension' and 'no more exceptions.'"
He forced a smile. "Yeah, well, I talked to them. Sorted it out."
"Really?" Hope flickered across her face so fast it almost made him dizzy. "How? Ethan, we're months behind."
"I picked up more shifts," he lied smoothly. "Harris finally pulled his head out of his ass. Might get a raise. We'll be ahead of them soon."
Sam slumped back into the pillows, exhaling. "Thank God. I was… I kept thinking they were going to come in and tell me to pack my shit."
She glanced at the IV bag, then back at him. "I don't wanna go home yet. I still feel like… if I go back too soon, it'll just come back worse."
Ethan reached out and squeezed her hand, careful not to bump the cannula.
"You're not going anywhere until they say you're ready," he said. Until I say you're ready. "Don't stress about the money. That's my job."
She wrinkled her nose again. "I hate that it's your job."
"Yeah, well," he said lightly, "you always did hate working."
She stuck her tongue out at him. It was childish and perfect.
"You gonna get out?" she asked after a moment, more serious. "Of the docks, I mean. You always talk about saving up, moving us somewhere that doesn't smell like dead fish and piss."
He looked at the window. It showed him a slice of grey sky and a concrete wall.
"Yeah," he said. "Working on it."
She nodded like she believed him. Because she did. Because she had to.
"I can help, you know," she said. "When they finally let me out, I can get a job. Retail or something. Stand behind a counter, look pretty."
"You're not standing for shit until the doc signs off," he said. "Then we'll talk."
She squeezed his hand back.
"Okay, Dad," she teased.
He snorted. "Don't make me ground you."
They talked about nothing for a while. Some dumb show she'd been binge‑watching on the ward TV. A nurse she hated. The old lady in the next bed who snored like a chainsaw and cursed in three languages.
He stayed until visiting hours ended, and the nurse gave him the polite but firm "go home" look.
On the way out, Sam called after him, "Ethan?"
He turned in the doorway.
She smiled, small and soft. "Thanks. For… you know. Handling it."
He swallowed down everything he wanted to say.
"Always," he said instead. "Get some sleep, Sammy."
She did a little salute with the hand that wasn't full of IV. "Aye aye, captain."
He let the door close.
The apartment building he and Sam called home was the kind of place you only noticed when the city wanted a new parking lot. Peeling paint, broken mailboxes, a stairwell that smelled like stale cigarettes and damp carpet.
He climbed the steps two at a time, muscles complaining, head buzzing with too much and not enough.
The hallway light outside their door flickered like it was trying to have a seizure.
There was something white shoved between the door and the frame.
Ethan frowned and pulled it free.
An envelope. No name. No return address. Just his door and the fact that it didn't belong.
His skin crawled.
He opened the door, stepped inside the dark apartment, and flipped the light on. The room was exactly as he'd left it that morning—secondhand couch, tiny TV, chipped coffee table, Sam's blanket tossed over one arm.
He locked the deadbolt, slid the chain, then looked at the envelope again.
He tore it open.
Inside was a single scrap of paper, folded once.
He smoothed it out on the table.
An address. A time.
Four words, block‑printed.
ONE NIGHT. ONE JOB.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Unknown number.
He thumbed it open.
Unknown: Show up, or we show up first.
Ethan stared at the screen until the letters blurred.
He looked at the address again. He knew the street. Knew the bar on that corner. Knew exactly whose territory it sat in.
He let out a long, slow breath.
"Fuck," he said into the empty room.
The cheap overhead light hummed in answer.
He set the paper down carefully, like it was made of glass, then sank onto the couch and scrubbed his hands over his face.
He'd wanted a way out.
He'd just found a way in.
And there was no fucking way to walk away now without someone paying in blood.
He looked toward Sam's closed bedroom door.
Then, finally, he picked up his phone and added the unknown number to his contacts.
He didn't give it a name.
Some debts were better not labelled.