The city smelled distinct from the cabin, a blend of exhaust fumes, fried food, and an electric charge that made the hairs on his arms stand up. Neon lights shimmered in puddles scattered across the pavement. People moved with determination, each absorbed in their own agendas, creating a web of lives intertwining. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, he felt like a ghost drifting through the lives of others.
He lacked a name he could rely on. His last name was etched into leather on a steering wheel, a constant reminder of a past he couldn't remember. He possessed a photograph that urged him to Find Elena. He also carried a locket with the face of a woman who had haunted him whenever he looked in the mirror. His hands knew how to kill, and that was enough to keep him moving forward.
He navigated the city as if testing its memory. Shopkeepers glanced up momentarily before returning to their work. A young boy selling newspapers reached out to offer him a copy but froze mid-motion, as if the headline had triggered a memory in someone else. An elderly woman crossing the street looked right through him, failing to see anything worthy of note. It was a tapestry of small indifferences until a taxi driver honked and shouted a curse at him for standing too close to the curb.
He made his way toward the hospital, a place where bleeding wounds and broken bones demanded something straightforward and factual. A nurse could stitch him up without the burden of faces and favors clouding the air. He pushed open the glass doors, and the harsh fluorescent lights hit him like an interrogation.
The woman at the reception desk looked up, her hands quivering on the clipboard. She scrutinized him as if he were a souvenir. "Sir," she said, her voice tense, "do you have any identification?"
He patted his empty pockets. "No."
Her lips moved silently, a prayer for recognition. "We have a man on file. He was in the warehouse… Moretti." The name dropped into the reception area like a stone. Other nurses glanced over, and one pressed a hand to her throat.
He felt the weight of their gazes on him, the room narrowing until all attention was focused on him. Before long, security approached, firm yet polite, suggesting he leave until they called for him. When he attempted to explain that he needed help, a surgeon brushed past him and muttered, "We can't turn this into a circus." The accusation stung like a splash of cold water.
Outside, the air was colder, carrying the taste of cigarettes on the breeze. He walked until the hospital faded behind him, the street reassembling into a faceless crowd. A payphone hummed in a nearby alcove. He tucked the locket into his pocket, rubbing it like a charm, and caught his reflection in the payphone glass. The woman in the locket gazed back at him, her expression small yet certain. No name. No answers.
He followed his instincts through the city, much like a man tracking a scent. The faint presence that had lingered in the cabin tugged at him like a thread. She moved through the crowd, unseen, and he found himself gravitating toward her. She was always just out of reach, a whiff of perfume and a glimpse of a dress under the streetlights. Once, while turning a corner, he caught her reflection in a diner window, her image hovering behind coffee drinkers and tabloid readers. When he blinked, she vanished.
That pull led him to a narrow side street where the neon sign of a jazz bar flickered softly: The Blue Lantern. The glass door was fogged, and music seeped out like smoke. He hesitated but stepped inside, where the atmosphere enveloped him like a familiar memory.
The bar had a scent of lemon oil and spilled beer, and a piano played a slow, haunting melody. Men in wide lapels and women with teased hair leaned closely over their drinks, their conversations too intimate to overhear. He moved through the space like a man arriving at a theater where his life had once been the main event.
Some patrons glanced up as he entered, not everyone, but enough to create an unsettling shift in the room. A man at a corner table rested his hand on the grip of a concealed pistol and observed him with careful scrutiny. Two others, dressed in suits that had once been black but were now faded with age, exchanged silent acknowledgments through subtle gestures.
"He's supposed to be dead," someone whispered.
The bartender, a burly man with a scar running down his cheek, wiped a glass while studying him. The piano player's fingers stumbled mid-tune. A woman at the bar turned her gaze toward him, her eyes vacant, as if the world had erased him from existence.
He took a seat in the back, where the light softened and the smoke formed halos around the ceiling. A waitress placed a glass in front of him without asking. The music wrapped around his thoughts, and he waited for the sensation that everything here belonged to someone else, only to return when called by the right name.
A shadow broke away from the crowd and approached him. He sensed rather than saw the soft sound of boots on the worn floorboards. The man who slid into the seat across from him was immaculate, with slicked-back hair and a face that could have graced a magazine cover. He smiled in a way that suggested expertise, not warmth.
"Welcome back," the man said, his voice smooth as oil. He extended a trembling hand that revealed his nervousness despite its polished demeanor. "I didn't expect to see you again."
He studied the man, attempting to fit a name to him like a child trying on different hats, but only the hollow echo of the leather steering wheel filled his mind. "Who are you?" he asked.
"Vincent Rinaldi," the man replied. "I oversee New Jersey operations for the family now. You were… well, you know what you were." Vincent's smile stretched wider, yet his eyes remained sharp as a knife. "Everyone believed you were finished. That warehouse was supposed to ensure it."
Heat surged in his chest, unrelated to the cigarette smoke around them. The room closed in around him. The piano continued to play, but the notes felt distant, as though emanating from another world. He glanced down at his hands, the scar on his knuckles forming a pattern he couldn't decipher, but he felt the muscle memory of pulling a trigger countless times. He remembered the movements like a dancer recalls their steps.
"Why am I here?" he asked.
Vincent leaned closer. "Good question," he said. "We need to know what you remember. Or what you don't. People will start to wonder why Moretti is alive when they've already buried him. That complicates matters."
At the mention of the name, a cold whisper brushed against his neck. He turned and glimpsed her for a heartbeat, standing by the stage as if she had always been part of the scene. Her dress was simple and black, her hands folded at her waist. Her lips moved silently, and he understood, without words, that she was observing them. She looked at him with a combination of tenderness and accusation.
"No one else sees her," he murmured.
Vincent's expression hardened, making the room feel even smaller. "There are things you should not mention in public." He tapped the table twice, signaling someone behind him. Two men stood up, their movements synchronized and alert. "We'll get you somewhere private. You need rest and answers. But you also need to stay low. There are people who won't be happy to find you alive."
A patron laughed too loudly at a joke, snapping him back to reality. The woman by the stage had stepped back a pace. The locket in his pocket grew warm, like a heartbeat pressed against his skin. He stroked it until the metal brushed the scar on his palm, while the city outside roared on like an unstoppable machine.
Vincent stood up, a figure full of authority and danger. "Come with me," he said. "We have a room, and a doctor will see you when the moon is kinder. For now, eat, drink, remember nothing, or everything, as it suits you."
He wanted to ask about Elena and demand an explanation for the photograph. Instead, he found himself nodding and rising, not because Vincent commanded it, but because an unseen thread around him was pulling tight.
As he followed Vincent through a side door into a corridor that carried the scent of old money and stale perfume, the pianist struck a single sour note. The woman by the stage lifted her chin, her mouth forming a word he almost heard before the world folded back into shadow.
"Welcome home, boss," a calm voice said behind him, close and steady. "We have much to discuss."