LOVE IN AISLE 5

Chapter 6 - THE CAMERA

The morning after Aisle Five burned, Eunice Cole woke up in Eric Moretti's bed alone.

The other side was cold. His pillow had his gun under it. She had felt it in the night. He had slept with his head on her lap counting until 2 a.m., then he carried her to the pillow, laid her down like she was glass, and left. Where?

She sat up. Same black dress, washed and folded neatly by someone — not her. On the chair, his white shirt she wore last night, folded too. Perfect. Like Aisle Five.

Downstairs, the house was quiet. Too quiet for a mafia house. No men with guns in the hallway. No Marco dead smile. Just smell of coffee and old wood.

"Eric?" she called, small voice.

No answer.

She walked down, barefoot again, because she owned no shoes here, only that one pair of work shoes left in Aisle Five that probably burned. Her heart beat fast. What if he left her here? What if last night was a dream and he went back to Sophia in red?

"Vincent?" she tried. "Leo?"

A woman appeared from the kitchen. Old, sixty, black dress like a maid, but eyes kind, not cold. She had been here forever, you could tell.

"Miss Cole, Boss said you should eat. He said you didn't eat last night," she said, soft Italian accent. "He left at five a.m. He said to tell you he went to clean your aisle. He said to tell you —" she looked at a paper in her hand, reading Eric's handwriting, frowning, "He said to tell you 'Don't cry when you see it. It is still your perfect.'"

Eunice's hand went to mouth. He went to clean it himself? The boss?

She didn't eat. She ran outside. Eric's black car was gone. Marco's car was there.

"Take me to the warehouse," she told Marco. "Now."

Marco looked at her. For first time, no dead smile. Respect. Because she stopped a shooting last night.

"Boss said you should stay," Marco said.

"Take me to my aisle," she said, voice shaking but loud. "Now. That is an order. I sit in his chair, remember?"

Marco stared, then opened the car door. "Yes, Miss Cole."

---

Aisle Five smelled like smoke.

Eunice stood at the entrance and her knees buckled.

It was not small. Leo lied. Half the aisle was black. Black crates, melted plastic, wet floor from fire trucks, ash everywhere. And in the middle, where she always stood to count, her little wooden table — burned. Her chair — burned. Her clipboard — gone. Just ash.

One thousand three hundred crates, burned to one thousand and nothing.

She walked in, smoke in her nose, tears already falling, and she knelt in ash, in her black dress, touching black crates that were once perfect.

"They burned it," she whispered. "They burned my perfect."

Behind her, a voice. Low. Tired.

"I told you not to come."

Eric.

He was there, in jeans and black t-shirt, no suit, no boss clothes, hands black with ash, face dirty, holding a broom like a packer. Eric Moretti, who owned the docks, sweeping her ash.

She turned, crying openly now.

"You are cleaning it? You?"

"Who else?" he said, walking to her, dropping broom, kneeling in ash with her, not caring about his expensive jeans. "I made it clean for you. I have to make it clean again. I told my father I would make it perfect again before you came."

"You left me alone in that big house," she sobbed, hitting his chest weak. "I woke up alone. I thought you left me for Sophia."

He caught her hands, kissed her knuckles, ash on his lips.

"Never," he said. "I could never leave you alone after fire. But I had to come here before you saw it dirty. I wanted to clean it. I wanted you to see it perfect. I failed."

She looked around, tears falling into ash.

"It is not perfect anymore. It is dirty. Like the rest of the world. My perfect is gone."

"No," he said, and he pulled something from behind his back. New. Clean.

A new little wooden table. Same as old one. New chair. New clipboard, with fresh white paper. And on top, a new black marker, and a small name plate that said in gold letters:

*AISLE FIVE - PROPERTY OF EUNICE COLE*

She gasped, hand over mouth, loud sob.

"You — you put my name —"

"Vincent signed it this morning," he said, voice low, watching her face. "Legally, Aisle Five is yours. Deed in your name. If I die, if my father dies, if Russo burns everything, Aisle Five is still yours. No one can take it. Not even me. It is yours. Your perfect. Forever."

She was shaking, touching the name plate with dirty fingers.

"Why?" she whispered. "Why would you give a warehouse girl an aisle? Why would you give me anything? I have nothing to give you. I am nobody."

He didn't answer at first. He stood up, walked to the far wall where the old security camera was. The one she always thought was broken. He reached up, pulled it down, and handed it to her.

She frowned. "Camera?"

"Open it," he said.

She opened the small black box with shaking hands. Inside, not wires. Inside, a small SD card and a folded paper. Old paper, yellow.

She unfolded the paper. It was a printed photo. Her. Two years ago. In Aisle Five, counting, wearing blue shirt, hair in ponytail, mouth moving — one thousand three hundred. Timestamp: *06/14/2023 - 11:42 PM*

Her heart stopped.

"Two years ago?" she whispered. "You — you have photo of me from two years ago?"

Eric sat back down in ash, looking at her, gray eyes full of something she had never seen — shame, obsession, love so deep it scared even him.

"I watched you for two years, Eunice," he said, quiet, like a confession in church. "Not three weeks. Two years."

She stood up, stepping back, camera in hands, scared.

"What?"

"The camera in Aisle Five was not for security," he said. "It was for you. I installed it two years ago when you started. My men told me there was a girl in Aisle Five who counted like a machine, who never stole, who came early, left late, who kept the dirtiest aisle clean. I didn't believe. So I put camera. I watched one night. You counted to one thousand three hundred and you smiled at the end because you got it perfect. You smiled alone in empty aisle. And I... I didn't sleep that night. Not because of pills. Because of your smile."

"Eric —"

"Every night after, I watched," he continued, voice breaking. "Every night at 11 p.m., I opened my phone and watched you count. In meetings with Russians, I watched you. In bed with — with no one, because I stopped bringing girls after I saw you — I watched you. You were my clean. My medicine before you even knew my name. I know you hum when you count. I know you count twice when you are nervous. I know you touch each crate like you are saying sorry for leaving it. I know you cried once in Aisle Five because your shoes had hole. I sent new shoes to locker room next day, anonymous, you thought it was from company. It was me."

Eunice was crying hard now, SD card in hand, photo in hand, two years of being watched.

"You watched me for two years and never talked to me?"

"I was scared," he said, simple, honest, a boy again. "I am Eric Moretti. Girls like Sophia throw themselves at me. I buy them. I own them. But you... you never looked at camera. You never looked at me. You looked at crates. You made me feel like I was dirty and you were clean and if I touched you, I would make you dirty too. So I watched from far. Until three weeks ago when Marco said he would put drugs in Aisle Five and you would be fired if you didn't let him. And I came down. And I sat in your chair. And I told you you were in my chair. Because I couldn't watch anymore. I had to be in same aisle."

Silence. Ash falling.

Eunice looked at burned crates, at new table with her name, at man on knees in ash who owned half of New York but swept her floor.

"You love me since two years?" she whispered.

"I don't know what love is," he said. "My father said Morettis don't love. They own. But if love is counting with a girl on phone every night and feeling peace, if love is firing three men because they smoked near her aisle, if love is putting an aisle in her name and sweeping ash with my own hands so she doesn't cry — then yes. I have loved you for two years, Eunice Cole. And I will love you for twenty more. If you let me."

She dropped the camera. It fell in ash. She knelt, grabbed his dirty face, and kissed him. Not forehead. Mouth. First time she kissed him first. Hard, crying, ash on both of them, taste of smoke and salt.

"I let you," she sobbed into his mouth. "I let you, you crazy, crazy mafia man who watched me count. I let you. But you have to promise one thing."

"Anything," he whispered, hands in her hair, ash in her hair.

"Never watch me from far again," she said, looking into his gray eyes, hers brown and full of tears and fire. "If you want to watch me, watch me here. In my aisle. With me. Not on phone. Not from camera. Here. Where I can see you too. Because I... I think I have loved you since you sat in my chair three weeks ago and told me I was not everybody. I think I was waiting for you to sit."

He laughed, cried, kissed her again, deep, in the middle of burned Aisle Five, in ash, with her name on gold plate.

And above them, the new security camera he had installed that morning — not hidden this time, big and obvious, with red light — recorded them, but this time not for him alone. This time for both of them.

Because Aisle Five was no longer just hers. It was theirs. Perfect and burned and perfect again.

Outside the warehouse, a black car with Russo plates watched. Sophia inside, looking at them through binoculars, seeing him kiss the packer in ash, and she made another phone call, voice no longer crying, but cold, dead.

"Father, he gave her the deed. So we don't burn the aisle anymore," she said. "We burn the girl."