The coffee shop sat at the edge of town where tarred road slowly surrendered to red dust. On one side stood a row of newly built plazas with tinted glass and flickering signboards; on the other, a stretch of low houses with zinc roofs and cassava fields fading into scrubland. It was the kind of place that tried very hard to look modern without quite succeeding.
The shop's sign creaked gently in the wind. Inside, the scent of roasted beans mingled with the faint smell of damp earth that drifted in whenever the door opened. The espresso machine hissed like it was tired of performing, and an old ceiling fan rotated lazily, pushing warm air around instead of cooling it. A chalkboard menu listed drinks in careful handwriting; Caramel Latte, Mocha Supreme, Village Brew, some letters already smudged.
Farmers in dusty boots shared tables with office workers tapping on laptops. Motorbikes occasionally roared past outside, shaking the windowpanes. It was busy enough to feel anonymous, quiet enough for serious conversations.
Mateo arrived first.
He chose a seat near the back, half-shadowed, with a clear view of the entrance. The waitress cleaning tables approached him, "Welcome sir, what would you be having?" Mateo stared at the young girl standing before him, he assessed her with his eyes having lewed thoughts as he did almost being lost in thought about what he would like to do to the beauty in front of him, his dick twitched underneath his faded jeans while he liked his lip. "Sir, your order?" the girl innocently asked as she took a step backward on instinct. "I'll have your strongest black coffee please" he said adjusting his position and picking the pieces of his ego. "Comin' right up" the girlreplied gleefully and skipped back to the counter as though she was intentionally teasing him. After a while, she brings him cup of coffee, leaning in close.. too close, close enough for Mateo to see her cleavage as she jiggled her cup-sized breasts in the hopes of getting a tip, she places the cup on the table and walks away leaving Mateo's mind to wonder...
His fingers drummed against the ceramic cup in front of him. He hadn't touched the coffee. His phone screen still showed the message from Lucas:
I have a job for you.
Mateo reread it like the words might rearrange themselves into something harmless.
The door chimed.
Lucas walked in with his usual unhurried confidence, dressed too sharply for the town—dark shirt, clean boots, a smile that suggested he owned more than he admitted. He scanned the room once, spotted Mateo, and slid into the seat opposite him.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Lucas said lightly.
"Depends on the job," Mateo replied.
Lucas signaled for a cappuccino, as if they were discussing nothing heavier than weekend plans. He leaned back, crossing one leg over the other.
"It's simple," he began. "You pick up an item. You deliver it. That's it."
Mateo didn't blink. "What item?"
Lucas took his time answering, watching the barista steam milk. "A painting."
Mateo's jaw tightened.
"What kind of painting?"
"The expensive kind."
Silence settled between them, thick and uneasy.
Lucas lowered his voice slightly. "It's currently in storage. You retrieve it. Deliver it to a location I'll give you after pickup. No detours. No questions."
Mateo's pulse quickened. He could feel it in his throat.
"Who owns it?" he asked.
Lucas gave him a look that said the question was unnecessary.
"You know who," Lucas replied softly.
The word mafia didn't need to be spoken. It hung there anyway.
Mateo's fingers curled around the edge of the table. "You said it was simple."
"It is simple."
"It's mafia property, Lucas."
Lucas shrugged, almost amused. "It's a canvas with paint on it."
"It's leverage," Mateo shot back. "Or laundering. Or a message. People don't move art like that for decoration."
Lucas leaned forward now, voice smooth. "You're not stealing it. You're not selling it. You're not even opening the crate. You're transporting it. You've done worse."
Mateo swallowed. His mind raced ahead of him—armed escorts, hidden trackers, the kind of men who didn't send warnings twice. He imagined headlines, imagined disappearing. He imagined the wrong person thinking he had tampered with something he hadn't.
"What happens if something goes wrong?" Mateo asked quietly.
"Nothing will go wrong."
"That's not an answer."
Lucas smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "You'll be compensated well. Enough to stop worrying about small-town coffee shops and leaking roofs."
Outside, a motorbike backfired sharply. Mateo flinched.
Lucas noticed.
"It's a delivery," Lucas repeated, calm as ever. "In and out. You're not joining anything. You're not signing your soul away. Just moving a box."
Mateo stared down at his untouched coffee. The steam had long faded. His reflection in the dark surface looked uncertain, smaller than he felt.
A painting.
An expensive one.
Owned by people who did not forgive mistakes.
Lucas tapped the table once. "So?"
The ceiling fan continued its slow, indifferent rotation above them as the semi-urban town carried on outside—half modern ambition, half rural quiet—while Mateo weighed a decision that felt anything but simple.
*****************************************************************************
The apartment looked like it had once tried to be cheerful.
Now it sagged under neglect.
The curtains were sun-bleached and uneven, one side hanging lower than the other, as if whoever had put them up had simply given up halfway through. A cracked window let in the faint hum of traffic from the main road three streets away—steady, indifferent, the sound of a world continuing on while something in here had stopped. The walls carried faint smoke stains that climbed toward the ceiling in uneven shadows, remnants of candles burned late into nights Bambi tried not to remember. Somewhere in the kitchen, a pot with dried food crusted along its edges sat abandoned in the sink. A fly traced slow circles around its rim.
The air was thick.
Burning incense—sharp, overly sweet, cloying—fought desperately against the sour scent of stale rice and oil that had soaked into the fabric of the room over time. It was a losing battle. The incense sticks had burned down to thin skeletons in a chipped ceramic holder shaped like a lotus, their smoke coiling upward like restless spirits with nowhere to go. Bambi had lit them hours ago. She couldn't remember why.
In the middle of the living room, Bambi paced.
She was in her early thirties, but there was something disciplined about her body—thin in a way that spoke of restraint rather than frailty, of meals skipped not from poverty but from the inability to swallow. Her arms were toned, her posture straight despite the weight pressing down on her shoulders. Hazel-brown eyes, bright even in the dimness, moved anxiously from wall to door to phone and back again, a constant orbit of vigilance. Her hair fell in glossy waves past her shoulders, beautiful and untamed, catching the weak light whenever she turned—but today she had not brushed it. It tangled at her back, forgotten.
She had not sat down in hours.
Her bare feet moved restlessly across the worn rug, over and over the same path, until the fibers had flattened beneath her steps. On the wall near the couch hung a framed photograph. She kept orbiting it, as though drawn by gravity she could not escape.
Jade.
The picture was slightly tilted.
Bambi noticed it every time. She never straightened it. Some part of her believed that if she touched the frame too often, she might smudge whatever remained of the person inside it.
Jade looked young in the photograph—early twenties at most, before life had sharpened its edges against her. Her hair flowed down in loose, effortless curls that framed her face like a soft halo, each strand catching light as though lit from within. There was something strikingly fluid about her features. The faint curve of her lips held a smile that could have been shy or knowing, innocent or devastating. Her jawline was defined but not harsh. Her cheekbones were sculpted, yet gentle. She could pass as a woman with delicate strength or as a man with soft beauty. There was an androgynous elegance to her, a balance that made her impossible to confine to a single impression—and that had always been the point.
Her eyes in the photo seemed almost amused, almost distant.
Almost something more.
Bambi remembered the day it was taken. Jade had been laughing at something just outside the frame—a passing car, a child's shout, maybe nothing at all. The photographer had called her name, she had turned, and this moment had been stolen from time. Bambi had been standing right beside the camera. She remembered the exact sound of Jade's laugh.
She could no longer hear it in her memory. It had faded, like sunlight from a room.
Bambi stopped pacing.
She stared at the image like it might answer her.
Her hands trembled as she reached out, fingers brushing the frame. The glass was cold. She left fingerprints on its surface.
"He's talking to him again," she whispered, voice cracking.
Silence answered.
The incense smoke curled between her and the photograph, distorting Jade's face into something almost moving.
"Mateo has started conversing with Lucas again."
The name felt poisonous in her mouth. She spoke it like spitting out spoiled fruit.
Her breathing grew uneven. She pressed her forehead lightly against the wall beside the picture, as though proximity could steady her. But the fear only tightened inside her chest, coiling around her ribs like a vine. She could feel it constricting with every breath.
She knew what Lucas brought with him.
Jobs that sounded small. Favors that weren't favors. Deliveries that never stayed simple.
She had watched it happen before. To others. To Jade.
Her knees buckled suddenly, and she sank to the floor beneath the photograph. The incense smoke drifted above her, blurring the edges of the room, making the walls seem farther away than they were. Or maybe closer.
"I don't know what to do," she sobbed, her voice breaking open in the stale air. "I don't know how to stop him."
Her hands covered her face, shoulders shaking. The apartment felt smaller with every breath, the walls leaning inward as though they, too, understood the danger pressing at the door. Outside, a motorbike coughed and sputtered down the street. For one terrible moment, Bambi's heart seized—she thought it had stopped outside.
But the sound faded.
It was never him. It was never Mateo, returning changed. Not yet.
Above her, Jade's almost-smile remained unchanged, suspended in a moment where things were simpler, where conversations with Lucas did not yet exist, where the word mafia belonged to movies and not to men who sat across from your brother in coffee shops.
Bambi wept beneath that frozen expression, terrified of what was coming and powerless to pull Mateo back from it.
Her phone lay dark on the coffee table.
She stared at it through her tears.
Somewhere across town, Mateo was sitting across from Lucas. She could picture it with unbearable clarity—the ceramic cup untouched, the ceiling fan turning slow, the words passing between them like currency.
She could warn him.
Her hand reached for the phone, hesitated, pulled back.
What would she say?
Come home. Don't trust him. Remember what happened to Jade.
But Mateo remembered. That was the problem. He remembered everything.
The phone remained dark.
Bambi pulled her knees to her chest and pressed her back against the wall beneath Jade's photograph. The incense had nearly burned out. The last thread of smoke rose thin and hesitant, then dissolved into nothing.
The room grew very quiet.
And then, from the hallway outside her door, she heard footsteps.