I didn't go home after the nursing home.
I walked until my feet ached and my lungs burned from the cold. Past the park. Past the bodega. Past the church on Steinway where my mother used to light candles for my father after he left. She stopped going eventually. I think she realized no amount of prayer was bringing him back.
My phone kept buzzing in my pocket. Leo. Leo. Leo.
I didn't answer.
At some point, I ended up at a diner on 31st Street. The kind of place with cracked vinyl booths and a waitress who calls you honey and coffee that tastes like it's been sitting on the burner since yesterday. I ordered a grilled cheese I didn't want and ate it anyway. Fuel. That's all food was to me now. Something to keep me standing.
The woman at the counter was arguing with someone on her phone. A boyfriend, maybe. Her voice was tired in a way I recognized. The sound of someone who's been fighting the same fight for years and lost every round.
I looked away. I had enough of other people's problems.
My phone buzzed again. This time, a text.
I'm outside your apartment. Please. It's bad this time.
I stared at the words. Outside my apartment. Leo hadn't been to my apartment in eight months. The last time, he'd borrowed three hundred dollars and disappeared for two weeks. I never got it back.
I thought about ignoring him. Letting him stand in the cold until he gave up and went back to whatever hole he'd crawled out of.
But he was my brother.
That word used to mean something.
He was sitting on the steps of my building when I got there. Knees pulled up to his chest. A bruise on his cheekbone that was fresh enough to still be purple. He looked smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I'd just stopped seeing him as the boy I grew up with.
"Hey, sis."
"Don't." I walked past him and unlocked the door. "Don't 'hey sis' me."
He followed me up the stairs. Three flights. My legs were screaming from the shift and the walking and the weight of everything. I didn't invite him in. He came in anyway.
My apartment felt smaller with him in it. He stood in the middle of the living room, hands shoved in his pockets, looking around like he was seeing it for the first time. The secondhand couch. The pile of medical bills on the coffee table. The dead plant on the windowsill I kept forgetting to throw away.
"Nice place," he said.
"It's a shithole. What do you want, Leo?"
He flinched. Good. I wasn't in the mood to be gentle.
"I'm in trouble."
"You're always in trouble." I dropped my bag on the floor and sat on the arm of the couch. I didn't offer him a seat. "What is it this time? Gambling? Another girl? A car you crashed?"
He didn't answer right away. That was new. Leo always had an excuse ready, a story prepared, a way to make himself the victim. But this time, he just stood there, staring at the floor, and I felt something cold settle in my stomach.
"Leo. What did you do?"
"I borrowed money." His voice was quiet. Too quiet. "From some guys."
"What guys?"
"The kind you don't say no to."
I closed my eyes. I didn't want to hear this. I didn't want to be the one who had to fix it again. But I was always the one. I'd been the one since we were kids, since Dad left, since Mom got sick. Leo broke things. I put them back together.
"How much?"
"Fifty thousand."
The number hung in the air between us. I waited for him to laugh, to say he was joking, to tell me it wasn't really that much.
He didn't.
"Fifty thousand dollars?" My voice came out strangled. "Leo, I don't have fifty thousand dollars. I don't have five thousand dollars. I don't have five hundred dollars. Do you understand that?"
"I know. I know. But these guys-" He ran his hands through his hair. His fingers were shaking. "They're not like the others, Ava. They're not going to take a payment plan. They're not going to wait."
"So what do you expect me to do?"
"I don't know." He looked at me then. His eyes were desperate. Terrified. "I thought maybe you could talk to someone. At the hospital. A loan. Something."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. The sound was ugly and sharp and it made Leo take a step back.
"A loan? I already work seventy hours a week. I already sell my plasma twice a month for extra cash. I already skip meals so I can pay for Mom's room. And you want me to take out a loan?"
"I didn't know it was that bad."
"Because you never ask." I stood up. My legs were shaking. "You never ask, Leo. You just show up when you need something and disappear when I need you. You left me to handle Mom alone. You left me to handle everything alone."
"I know." His voice cracked. "I know I'm a screw-up. But these men-"
"What men? Who are they?"
He swallowed. "They're called the Moretti family."
The name meant nothing to me then. Just words. Just another problem Leo had dragged to my door.
"I can't help you," I said. "Not this time."
"Ava, please-"
"No." I walked to the door and opened it. "I'm done. I'm done saving you. I'm done setting myself on fire to keep you warm. Figure it out yourself."
He stood there for a long moment. His face was pale. The bruise on his cheek looked darker in the hallway light. For a second, I saw the boy he used to be. The one who held my hand at Dad's funeral. The one who promised we'd always look out for each other.
Then he walked out, and the door closed behind him, and I was alone.
I didn't cry.
I wanted to. The tears were there, waiting behind my eyes, but I didn't let them fall. I'd learned a long time ago that crying didn't fix anything. It didn't pay bills or save lives or bring fathers back. It just made your eyes puffy and your head hurt.
Instead, I cleaned my apartment. Scrubbed the kitchen counters until they shone. Washed the dishes that had been sitting in the sink for three days. Folded laundry I'd been ignoring. Anything to keep my hands busy. Anything to stop thinking about the number Leo had left behind.
Fifty thousand dollars.
I sat on my couch when the cleaning was done. The medical bills were still on the coffee table. The past-due notice from Green Meadows was on top. Friday. Two days.
My mother's face flashed in my mind. The way she'd looked out the window. The way she'd said Leo's name like he was still someone worth believing in.
I picked up my phone. Stared at the screen. I could call him. Tell him I'd changed my mind. Tell him I'd figure something out. I always figured something out.
But my thumb didn't move.
For the first time in my life, I had nothing left to give.
I didn't know that the decision was already out of my hands. I didn't know that Leo's debt had already been sold to men who didn't care about payment plans. I didn't know that the Moretti name was about to become the center of my world.
All I knew was the silence of my apartment. The cold air seeping through the windows. The weight of exhaustion pressing me into the couch.
Somewhere in the city, the man I'd saved last night was waking up in a hospital bed. His name was Marco Vitale. He was a soldier in the Moretti family. And he was telling his boss about the nurse with the steady hands.
The debt was already on its way.
I just didn't see it coming yet.
