Page 12 of Unbreakable Vow

“Where’s it coming from?” I ask, stepping down to her step.

“The laundry room.” She points at the only other door; water is seeping out from the bottom. “My key for it is inside.” She steps down into the puddle and unlocks her door.

As soon as it opens, water rushes out into the hallway.

I grab her and pull her back up onto the step.

“It’s in your apartment.”

She pushes the door all the way open and steps into her apartment, and I’m right behind her.

We’re standing in the kitchen that leads into the living room. Water stands half an inch in the entire apartment.

“What the hell?” She carefully walks through the kitchen and checks under the sink.

I check the small hallway off the kitchen that leads to a bedroom and the bathroom. Water is soaked into the carpetingin the hallway, but the bathroom and bedroom have been spared so far.

“Where is it coming from?” I check along the wall in the kitchen and find the drywall is soaked at the bottom.

“The laundry room is on the other side of that wall. Maybe it’s coming through the foundation?” She pulls her phone from her purse and makes a call. “Mr. Carlini, this is Cora. I just got home, and my apartment is flooded, it looks like it’s coming from the laundry room somehow…” She pauses, frowns. “All right. Thanks.”

“What did he say?” I ask.

“He said he knows. There’s some broken pipe or something in the laundry room. He has someone coming over to fix it.”

“And in the meantime? We need to turn off the water.” Incompetent asshole.

“It’s locked. He keeps a bolt on it so the tenants can’t mess with it.” She drops her phone back into her purse and leaves it on the kitchen table that’s big enough to sit two people. “I have towels in the other room. I’ll get them; maybe if I put them against the wall it might help.”

When she’s gone, I take her phone out and find the contact information for her landlord and send it to my phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting this fixed,” I tell her, putting her phone back and taking mine out.

“Sergei, he’s working on it.” She shoves towels under the table, against the floorboards where the water continues to stream into the apartment.

I shoot the information to one of my guys along with instructions of what I want done.

“Your shoes!” She points to my black Alessio Scrittos. “They’ll be ruined.”

“It’s fine. They’re just shoes.” I pocket my phone and look around the apartment. It’s homey. The furniture is either decades old or secondhand. Nothing hangs on the walls, but there are photos in frames on the end tables in the living room.

On the coffee table is a thick manila folder.

“Don’t touch that.” She hurries to me and grabs it before I can pick it up.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing. I just don’t want to lose anything in here.” She presses it flush against her chest.

I stare at her for a moment. The white tennis shoes she’s wearing are soaked through, now a dark, dank gray. Her furniture has been sitting in the water for a while; the legs will no doubt warp from the damage.

The carpet will be completely ruined by the water.

She walks past me back to the kitchen with the folder still pressed against her chest.

“Coraline.” I turn to her. “Pack what you’ll need for the immediate future.”

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