Chapter 13 - A Knock at Midnight
The neighborhood was four miles south of the gilded financial district, an area where historic brick tenements sat squeezed between auto-repair shops and dim neon diners. Rain had begun to fall over the asphalt, slicking the streets in iridescent oil sheens as my town car pulled up to the curb of a four-story walk-up.
I climbed the narrow, squeaking wooden staircase alone. The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage, damp wool, and radiator steam—a suffocating reminder of the cramped university flat Ethan and I had shared twelve years ago when our dreams were boundless and our pockets were empty.
I stopped before Apartment 3B and knocked three times.
The door opened after a long delay, held by an antique brass chain. Through the two-inch gap, Ethan’s face appeared in the dim shadow. He looked thinner, the sharp corporate polish worn down to raw exhaustion. His collar was unbuttoned, his dark hair ruffled, and his eyes carried the bewildered, bruised vulnerability of a man who had survived a shipwreck only to wash ashore on an empty reef.
"Ava?" His voice cracked slightly, disbelief widening his pupils. "What... what are you doing here?"
"Unlatch the door, Ethan. We need to talk."
He hesitated for a second, then slid the chain free and pulled the door wide. The apartment was immaculate, almost painfully so, but bare. A single duffel bag sat in the corner of the living room beside an unvarnished desk holding a laptop and two stacks of architectural textbooks—books I recognized as duplicates of my own university curriculum.
On the kitchen counter, illuminated by the refrigerator light, sat a single white ceramic plate with a slice of cold bread and a glass of tap water. The sight made something twist deep behind my ribs, but my voice remained razor-sharp.
"Richard Montgomery filed a federal patent injunction against Saint-Germain this morning," I began without preamble, stepping into the center of the hardwood floor. "He's using the stress-load equations you allowed Clara to take from our home office."
Ethan’s color drained until his skin was the shade of chalk. He gripped the back of an iron folding chair, his knuckles blanching. "Clara... she told me she was backing up my corporate files when the Saint-Germain bid collapsed. She said she was trying to scrub my name from the firm's liability records."
"She was scrubbing your hard drives into her father’s holding company," I corrected coldly. "They’re demanding forty percent of my life’s work, Ethan. And your signature is on the witness docket."
Ethan bowed his head, his chest heaving with a shuddering breath that sounded like torn linen. When he looked up, his eyes were wet, glistening under the bare ceiling bulb. "Ava... I swear to God on my life, I didn't know. I was blind. I was so terrified of being nobody that I let a snake into the room where you built your genius."
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"I don't need your remorse, Ethan," I said, stepping closer until only three feet separated us. "Remorse doesn't dissolve an injunction. I need you in front of a federal magistrate at nine o'clock tomorrow morning."
***
