Chapter 4 - The Slumlord's Panic
"M-Mr. Vitelli...?" Henderson stammered, his knees visibly trembling inside his cheap trousers. "I... I didn't know you had any personal interest in this parcel..."
"Who owns this building, Henderson?" I asked, my voice deadly quiet.
"V-Vanguard Holdings, sir... under Mr. Arthur Vance..."
"Vanguard is a subsidiary of Vitelli Capital Asset Management," I replied, watching Henderson's eyes bulge in absolute, terrifying horror. "Which means every brick, every lock, and every tenant in this building answers to my desk."
Henderson frantically began picking up his dropped clipboard from the mud. "Sir! We were only executing standard property modernization protocols! The property manager instructed us to clear non-performing units—"
"Put the furniture back inside Apartment 3B," I commanded, my voice slicing through the rain like a razor. "Right now."
The two movers didn't wait for Henderson to speak. They immediately picked up the wooden toy box and storage bins, rushing them back through the front entrance doors.
I turned around, crouching down onto the wet sidewalk in front of Jenny.
Jenny was staring at me in complete, stunned disbelief, her hands trembling against Toby’s back. She recognized me from the pawn shop, her eyes darting from my face to the cracked phone resting in my hand.
"You're... you were at the counter," Jenny whispered, her voice shaking with confusion and fear. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because no child in this city suffocates while I have the power to stop it," I said gently.
I reached out, wrapping my dry wool scarf around Toby’s shivering shoulders, gently lifting the little boy into my arms.
"Jenny, get in the car," I ordered softly. "Toby's medicine is waiting at Ninth Street, and we are getting him to a pediatric pulmonologist immediately."
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Jenny looked at her wheezing son resting his head against my shoulder, saw the steady, protective warmth in my eyes, and broke into a quiet sob of overwhelming relief.
She nodded, climbing into the passenger seat of the SUV as the rain drummed against the glass.
