Chapter 3 The Price of a Name

ARIA's POV

The check burned a hole in my jacket pocket.

I traced the embossed numbers through the fabric - $500,000 - half expecting it to vanish like the other miracles that never came. The weight of it wasn't just paper. It was pressure. It was guilt.

Three months ago, I was cramming for art history finals at Brooklyn College.

Two months ago, I dropped out when the hospital bills started drowning us.

Last month, I lied about my age to work as a waitress at that mob-owned Italian place in Red Hook, coming home with my shoes sticky with wine and my pockets full of singles.

And now this.

A single piece of paper worth more than everything we'd ever owned. More than all the birthday cards filled with "next year, I promise."

More than every GoFundMe we posted that barely covered cab fare.

I pushed open the apartment door.

It smelled like antiseptic and overcooked rice - comfort and suffering in one breath. Our two-bedroom walk-up had always been too small, too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter. But it was ours. The creaking floorboards, the faded posters on my wall, the fridge that buzzed louder when it rained - they were pieces of a life we had built, inch by inch, even when the world made us pay for every inch twice.

I found Mom at the stove, stirring a pot with one hand, the other pressed against her side where the pain lived now. She didn't turn when I walked in, just said, "You're back late," in that soft, stretched-thin voice that meant she'd been counting minutes.

"I had to make a stop," I said, and my own voice sounded foreign in my throat.

I slid the check across the counter.

Dominic said not to tell her.

Said it was part of the deal. Clean lines. No loose threads.

But this was Mom - my world, my gravity, my reason. I couldn't just vanish for nine months with some flimsy excuse. She'd tear the city apart looking for me.

The cancer might kill her eventually, but worry would finish the job first.

Her calloused fingers picked up the check.

The way her breath caught - just slightly - made my ribs ache.

She stared at it. Then at me. Then at the duffel bag by the door, half-zipped and already threatening to unravel the life we'd barely held together.

The only sound was the rice boiling over, hissing where it hit the burner.

"Who'd you kill?" she finally asked, voice dry as the dust on our windowsill.

I choked out a laugh. "Worse. I sold my face."

She turned her head slowly, like she wasn't sure she'd heard me right.

I told her about Dominic Laurent. About Sophia. About the school in Switzerland that would never let someone like me through its gates unless I was pretending to be someone else.

Mom turned off the stove.

The silence stretched between us like a noose.

"And this?" She flicked the check with a fingernail, eyes unreadable. "This is real?"

"They already transferred the first payment. Mount Sinai called while you were sleeping - they've got you scheduled for the new treatment next week." My voice cracked. "The one Dr. Ellis said could actually..."

Work. Cure you. Keep you here.

Her hands trembled around the check. When she looked up, her eyes were glassy with something worse than pain.

"What did you promise them, baby?"

"Nine months. Just nine months."

The lie tasted bitter. We both knew nothing would be the same after this.

She reached for me then, her fingers cold against my cheek, brushing back a strand of hair like she used to when I was little. "You should've talked to me first."

"I couldn't let you say no."

We stood there, quiet and breaking, and the air felt heavier than the city skyline pressing against our windows. Some truths don't have explanations. Just weight.

Later that night, I packed slowly, like a prisoner savoring their last night.

My waitressing uniform went into the trash. The sketchbook I'd been filling with portraits of sleeping subway riders got tucked under my mattress - a piece of Aria to come home to. The rest fit into one duffel:

Two pairs of jeans (the black ones without holes).

My Brooklyn College hoodie (stolen from a lost-and-found bin during orientation week).

The silver locket Mom gave me for my sixteenth birthday (still empty - the photo of Dad long gone).

At the bottom, I buried the burner phone Dominic's lawyer had handed me. For emergencies only. As if that made any of this normal.

I looked around my room once more - the ceiling stains shaped like continents, the half-torn concert poster, the windowsill full of ticket stubs and bottle caps. All the small things that made me feel real.

Dawn came too soon.

I stood at the door, duffel in hand, watching Mom pretend she wasn't watching me leave. The morning light caught the lines around her mouth, the new gray in her braids, and I memorized her like I might never see her again.

"You'll call?" she asked, like it was any other day. Like I was just going to class.

"Every Sunday."

Another lie. Sophia Laurent wouldn't have a mother dying in a Brooklyn walk-up.

She nodded, then reached into the junk drawer. Pressed a crumpled twenty into my palm. "For the train," she said, and the ordinary kindness of it shattered me.

The town car idled at the curb, sleek as a knife.

I stepped outside, wind biting at my sleeves, and took one last look at the building that had been my whole world - the rusted fire escape where I'd smoked my first cigarette, the bodega on the corner that always gave us credit, the window where Mrs. Ruiz yelled at her grandkids in rapid-fire Spanish every morning.

This was who I was.

Then I turned my back on Aria Cole and stepped into the car.