Chapter 4 - The Shared Wall
The rain had turned into a steady, gray drizzle by the time Leo’s armored town car slipped through the back security gates of the Rossi estate, merging unnoticed into the morning traffic of the city.
I sat in the front passenger seat, staring out the tinted window as the familiar skyline of my neighborhood drifted into view. The brick apartment building on 5th Street looked exactly as it had for years—dingy, neglected, with paint peeling around the front door frames and garbage cans overflowing on the sidewalk.
To anyone walking past, it was just another crumbling urban tenement.
Dominic sat silently in the back, dressed in a heavy black wool coat that concealed the bandages on his shoulder. His face was pale from the exertion, but his eyes never stopped moving, scanning the rearview mirrors and the pedestrians on the sidewalk with tactical precision.
“Park in the alley behind the laundry mat,” Dominic instructed quietly. “Leo, stay with the car. Keep the engine running and the scanner on police frequencies.”
“Boss—”
“Do it, Leo.”
We slipped through the rusted rear fire escape door of the apartment building, climbing the concrete stairs in silence. My heart hammered against my ribs as we reached the fourth floor. The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage and old carpet.
I pulled my keys from my canvas bag, my fingers slightly trembling as I slid the brass key into the lock of apartment 4B.
The door clicked open.
I pushed it inward, flipping the wall switch. The dim overhead bulb flickered to life, illuminating my small, sparsely furnished living room. Everything was exactly where I had left it before rushing to the Rossi estate: the stack of nursing textbooks on the coffee table, the ceramic mug with cold coffee stains, the small kitchen nook visible through the open archway.
Dominic stepped inside behind me, pulling the door shut and sliding the heavy deadbolt into place with a soft click.
He didn't look at the furniture or the kitchen. His eyes went straight to the eastern wall—the shared drywall partition separating my apartment from unit 4C next door.
“You’ve lived here four years?” Dominic asked quietly, walking slowly toward the kitchen nook.
“Four years and two months,” I answered, following him closely.
“Look at the baseboard beneath the radiator,” he said, pointing with the toe of his shoe.
I knelt down, brushing aside the edge of a frayed gray rug. Along the wooden baseboard, the white paint was freshly chipped, and a small, circular hole—about the diameter of a pencil—had been drilled cleanly through the plasterboard leading directly into the adjacent unit.
I touched the edge of the hole. It was smooth, freshly bored.
“An optical fiber borescope,” Dominic said, his voice cold as ice. “Someone wasn't just listening through the wall. They were watching your routine. Every shift you worked, every hour you slept, every phone call you received.”
Before I could process the violation, Dominic reached up and gripped the side of the wooden pantry cabinet built into the kitchen wall. With a sharp, sudden wrench of his left arm, the entire shelving unit groaned, shifted forward on concealed magnetic latches, and swung open like a secret door.
Behind the pantry shelves wasn't solid brick or the back of the building.
May you like
It was a crawlspace connecting apartment 4B directly to unit 4C. And sitting right inside the opening was a black military-grade laptop, plugged into an external hard drive, its screen glowing with a single blinking prompt.
---
