Blood on the Canvas

Chapter 7: Hours Left

"There's someone above the crew doing tonight's job," Marcus said, voice barely audible over the distant hum of traffic. "Someone Zion's been trying to nail down for months. If you can get me proof he's running the operation — names, location, timing, anything solid — I can get you out. Not just off the hook for tonight. Out. Permanently. Zion owes people above them, and those people want this guy more than they want you."

Fernando's mouth had gone dry. "You're asking me to spy on my own job. The one that already knows I've been trying to leave."

"I'm asking you to do one dangerous thing to stop doing all the dangerous things after it." Marcus's expression didn't shift, flat and practical in the way Fernando remembered from years of working under him. "You go in tonight like nothing's changed. You do what you're told. You keep your eyes open. And if you get me what I need before it's over, I promise you — by Monday, you're a ghost. Nobody comes looking again."

"And if I get caught looking?"

Marcus didn't answer that directly, which was its own kind of answer.

"You said you wanted out for real this time," he said instead. "This is what real costs."

Fernando stood in the dark a long moment, running every version of tonight through his mind — the version where he simply did the job and disappeared back into his half-built life afterward, still owned by a debt with no end; the version where he took Marcus's offer and either walked away clean or didn't walk away at all.

"Fine," he said finally, hating the word even as it left his mouth. "I'll do it."

"Good man." Marcus clapped him once on the shoulder, businesslike, already turning to go. "Be careful in there, Fernando. These aren't people who forgive mistakes."

He vanished back into the dark the way he'd appeared, and Fernando stood alone outside the shuttered pharmacy for a long time afterward, the weight of what he'd just agreed to settling heavy and cold in his chest.

---

Saturday had finally arrived, and in the Ade household, the fragile truce between Elizabeth's father and his children had turned into something almost resembling teamwork.

"If Aaron's coming, I want a plan," their father said, spreading a rough hand-drawn map of the neighborhood across the kitchen table like a man trying to regain some control over a situation that had none to offer. "Long route only. No side streets. You text me the second you leave the bar, and again the second you're home. All three of you."

"Dad, if it's this dangerous, maybe we just shouldn't go at all," Elizabeth said. "It's one Saturday. We can stay in."

Her father was quiet for a moment, and when he answered, it wasn't with the panic she expected, but something steadier, more considered — like he'd already turned the question over in his own head more than once.

"I've thought about that," he admitted. "But these people don't want you hurt, Elizabeth. They want their money. Hurting my kid doesn't get them paid — it just gets them a murder charge and a debtor who definitely never pays anything back. That call was meant to scare me into moving faster, not a threat to actually do something to either of you." He tapped the map. "That doesn't mean I want you careless. It means I want you careful, not locked in this house forever waiting for a debt I'm the one who owes to somehow resolve itself. You can't put your whole life on hold because I made a mistake eleven years ago. Long route, and you're not out of touch with me for more than twenty minutes. That's the deal."

"And if you're wrong?" Aaron asked quietly.

"Then I've been wrong about a lot of things lately," their father said, "and I'd rather be wrong being cautious than wrong hiding you both away like prisoners over something that's mine to fix." He looked between them, something pleading underneath the steadiness. "I need you to trust me on this one thing, even after everything else."

"It's not like they're gonna shoot us over a debt, Dad," Elizabeth said, a little exasperated now, wanting the conversation to be over more than she wanted to keep arguing. "That's not even how any of this works. You said it yourself — they want money, not bodies. I'll take the long way, I'll text you every twenty minutes, I'll do the whole thing. But can we please stop talking about this like I'm walking into a war zone?"

Her father managed something close to a tired smile at that. "Fair enough."

Aaron, leaning against the counter, caught Elizabeth's eye and gave the smallest shake of his head — let him have this. Elizabeth sighed and nodded at the map like she was actually studying it, though her mind had already wandered to the harder conversation still waiting.

"I still haven't told Bianca everything," she admitted quietly, once their father had stepped out to take a call. "About the letter. About any of it."

"You have to tell her before tonight," Aaron said. "Not during. Not after something happens. Before."

"I know." Elizabeth traced a finger along the edge of the map, tracing the long route their father had drawn in careful, anxious pen strokes. "I just don't know how to say 'my dad owes gang money and that's why you might be in danger too' without sounding insane."

"Just say it exactly like that. She'd rather know."

Elizabeth wasn't so sure, but she nodded anyway, and resolved to find the words before tonight, whether they came out gracefully or not.

---

Bianca, meanwhile, was having her own difficult conversation two doors down, though hers was with her father rather than about him.

She found him sober that evening, uncharacteristically so for the hour, sitting on the back porch with a mug of coffee instead of anything stronger, staring out at the darkening yard.

"Can we talk?" she asked, sitting beside him.

"Course."

"I'm worried about you." She said it plainly, no preamble, because she'd rehearsed a dozen gentler versions in her head all afternoon and none of them had felt honest enough. "The drinking's gotten worse since the layoff. I don't want to pretend I haven't noticed."

Her father was quiet for a long moment, turning the mug slowly in his hands.

"I know it has," he said finally. "I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you about that." He exhaled, long and unsteady. "Losing that job took something from me I didn't know I still had left to lose. Made me feel like every stupid thing I ever believed about not being enough finally had proof behind it."

"You are enough," Bianca said, throat tight. "You've always been enough."

"I appreciate you saying that, sunshine. I do." He looked at her then, eyes glassy but present, more himself than she'd seen him in weeks. "I'm gonna try to do better. Starting now. Not promising it's a straight line, but I'm gonna try."

She hugged him, and for a moment the two of them sat together on the porch in something that almost resembled peace, and Bianca let herself believe, just for that moment, that Saturday might actually be the uncomplicated night out she so badly needed.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Elizabeth.

Can we meet before we head out tonight? In person. There's something about tonight I need to tell you, and I don't want to do it over text.

Bianca stared at the message for a long moment, the small, fragile peace of the evening cracking slightly at the edges, and typed back the only thing she could think to say.

You're scaring me a little. Is everything okay?

The reply took almost a full minute to arrive.

I don't know yet. That's kind of the problem.

Bianca sat with the phone in her hand long after that, her father's coffee mug still warm on the step beside her, and felt the fragile calm of the evening give way to something colder and more uncertain — the sense that whatever Elizabeth needed to say before tonight, it was going to change something between them she couldn't yet name, and there were only a few hours left to find out what.