Mira wiped a coffee stain off the counter and held her breath like she always did when the morning rush thinned. The bell over Rosario Café's door had a tired jangle; it sounded like other people's plans. She liked that sound.
"Two flat whites and a toast," Emilia called. Her braid swung as she moved. "Stop daydreaming, Mira."
"I'm not daydreaming," Mira said. She wrapped a paper sleeve around her palm until it hurt.
The alley behind the café smelled of rain and frying oil. She was supposed to sweep it, but the broom felt heavy. A crumpled shape lay under the trash bin. A man. Blood everywhere.
Her hands moved before her brain. She dropped the broom, knelt, felt concrete bite her knees. The man's breathing was shallow. He wore a torn black jacket; his hand was limp and dark with blood.
"Hey," she said. "Hey—can you hear me?"
One grey eye opened. Cold. "Not now," he said. The voice had a command in it.
She tore a strip of her apron and pressed it to the wound. His skin was hot. "Someone call an ambulance."
He squeezed her wrist. "Don't. They'll track you if they know."
"Who?" She kept pressure on the wound, the fabric soaking red. "Who will look for me?"
He pushed something into her palm—a black card, smooth like leather. "Keep it," he said. "If they ask, say nothing."
The ambulance lights blinked like distant stars. Uniformed hands lifted him and took him away. Mira's apron smelled like copper.
Inside, Emilia opened the back door. "What did I tell you about wandering?"
"He said don't call," Mira said. Emilia's fingers brushed the blood and she slapped a napkin to Mira's hand.
"Who was he?" Emilia asked.
"Just a stranger," Mira lied. The black card burned in her pocket like a secret. Customers came and left. The café filled with small human problems—forgotten wallets, an argued phone call. Mira moved through it all in a fog, the day slanting.
She washed her hands again and again, the water turning pink then brown. The sink's faucet rattled like an accusation. Each time her fingers slid through the liquid, a memory surfaced: a child with dark eyes curled under a blanket, a man on a doorstep she couldn't name, a night sirens had come and left nothing. The memories were like half-formed pictures, edges blurred. She forced them back under the lid.
Emilia watched her. "You stayed too long," Emilia said. "You always do this. You disappear in your head."
"I was helping someone," Mira said. Simple, true enough. It sounded small in the noisy café.
"You could get hurt," Emilia said. "You could get more than hurt."
Mira let the words sit. Hurt was an old currency. She had been paying with it for years. "I know," she said.
The man didn't come back for hours. Mira thought of the black card in her pocket and imagined it was a stone. She felt watched, though she couldn't say why. The city around Rosario hummed with its own life—buses coughing, a dog barking, the far cry of a man rehearsing a confession in a doorway. Once, the sugar jar on the counter trembled as if with a small breath. She blinked and the sugar was still.
At three, when the late light leaned through the blinds, the bell jangled and the man stepped inside like a shadow that had learned to breathe. He didn't sit. He walked straight to her, eyes like glass. People paused mid-sip.
"You," he said.
Mira felt her heart climb her throat. "What do you want?" Her voice came out small.
"You patched me up," he said. "You left a mark." He placed a black card on the counter between them, no logo, no name, just the dark rectangle.
"Keep it," he said. "You saw my blood. Now you belong to my world."
The room narrowed. Emilia stood behind Mira, face white. Patrons watched. Mira looked at the card. Belong. World. The words felt heavy as iron.
"You shouldn't talk to him," Emilia whispered. "He's bad news."
"How do you know?" Mira asked.
Emilia's eyes darted to the doorway. "Half the city knows his name. The other half pretends they don't. He pulls strings."
The man watched them. "Names change," he said. "Cards don't."
"Say yes," he said softly. "Say yes and you'll be safe."
Say yes to what, Mira wondered. To being owned? To hiding? To a promise that smelled of metal? She remembered the night she lost everything—how the apartment had hummed with dangerous whispers before it all went dark, how she had wrapped a child in an old blanket and walked away with more holes than a refugee. She had made bargains before. She had learned how the world asked for silence and paid in threats.
She looked at Emilia and saw a face that refused to be hunted. "I won't be told what to do," Mira said. The words surprised her with how steady they were.
The man shrugged like he expected the defiance. "I don't want to force you," he said. "Not now. But choices have consequences."
Before she could answer, the bell jangled again, harder. The café door slammed open. A figure filled the doorway, backlit by the late sky. A voice—smooth, cold—cut through the murmur. "Adrian Voss," it said.
The name landed like a weight. Emilia's hand found Mira's wrist and squeezed so hard it hurt. A woman at a corner table whispered and folded her napkin over her mouth. Someone's phone slipped from a hand. For one breath the café belonged to a different gravity.
The man across from Mira didn't look up at first. His jaw tightened. Then slowly, very slowly, he lifted his head like a mechanism. Up close the face matched the rumor—older and colder than she expected, a jaw that could break glass. He had been playing a part in the alley and he wasn't finished.
Mira's mouth went dry. "You're—" she started, and forgot every careful protest she had practiced.
"Adrian Voss," the man said.