I heard the sound of a heavy zipper, like the one on a sports backpack, being yanked open. Then, the sound of something metallic hitting the wooden floor. And paper. Lots of paper.
“It’s all here,” said the boy in boots. “The Johnsons’ house, Mrs. Greene’s house, and the new guy’s house on the corner.”
“Mrs. Greene?” Lily’s voice dripped with contempt. “That nosy old woman is the priority. She almost caught me the other day. She’s becoming a problem.”
My heart stopped for a moment. Mrs. Greene? What were they doing to her?
“What do we do with her, Lil?” a third voice asked, female this time, trembling. “I don’t want… you know, I don’t want anyone to get really hurt. We said it was just in and out.”
“Shut up, Sarah,” Lily snapped. The mattress creaked as she leaned forward. “No one gets hurt if they do what they’re supposed to. But old Greene has eyes everywhere. We need to scare her. Or at least make sure she stops looking out the window.”
From my hiding place, I saw a hand drop something to the floor near Lily’s slippers. It was a crowbar. An iron crowbar, rusted at the tip. And next to it fell several bundles of banknotes held together with rubber bands, and what appeared to be jewelry: a gold watch, several pearl necklaces, rings with stones that glittered even in the dim light under the bed.
I brought my hand to my mouth to stifle a scream. They weren’t skipping school to smoke cigarettes or drink stolen beer. My daughter, my little Lily, was leading a gang of thieves. They were robbing the neighborhood.
“How much did we get from the house at number 42?” Lily asked, impatiently tapping her feet.
“About three thousand in cash. And the jeweler,” replied the boy with the dirty sneakers. “But the dog almost heard us. We had to give him the meat you brought.”
—Fine. As long as it doesn’t bark, I don’t care what it eats.
There was a tense silence. I could see the military boots moving nervously.
“Lil…” the boy, Leo, began. “There’s a problem.”
-That?
—In the house at 42… we found this.
There was a rumble of papers being unfurled. I tried to crane my neck, to see more than ankles and soles, but the angle was impossible.
“What is this?” Lily asked. Her voice lowered its tone, losing its aggression and becoming something darker, more calculating.
—It was in the safe, next to the money. They’re photos, Lil. Photos of… us.
The air in the room seemed to turn to ice.
“From us?” she repeated.
“Yes. Look. That’s you leaving school. That’s me in the park,” said the girl, Sarah. “And there are dates written on the back. Someone was watching us before we started watching them.”
Lily jumped out of bed. Her white sneakers paced frantically back and forth in front of my nose.
“Give me that!” he shouted, snatching the papers from the other man’s hands. “This doesn’t make any sense. The guy from 42 is a boring accountant who lives alone. Why would he have pictures of me?”
“Perhaps he knows…” Leo began.
“Nobody knows anything!” Lily interrupted. “We’re like ghosts. We come in when they’re not there, we leave without a trace. We wear gloves, we cover the cameras. Nobody knows anything.”
“But this proves they do know,” Sarah insisted, her voice on the verge of tears. “Lil, I’m scared. If they know who we are… they could go to the police. Or worse.”
“No one’s going to the police about this,” Lily said slowly, and the tone of her voice chilled me to the bone. It was the tone of a dangerous adult, not a thirteen-year-old girl. “Because if he was watching us, it means he has something to hide too. Something much worse than a few robberies.”
Suddenly, Lily’s phone rang. It wasn’t her usual ringtone, that catchy pop song that played all the time. It was a dry, vibrating buzz.
“Silence,” he ordered.
I saw her shoes stop.
“Yes?” she answered. There was a long pause. “Yes, we have the package… No, there was an unexpected problem… We found something else… No, not by phone… Okay. In an hour. At the usual place.”
He hung up.
“Pack everything up,” he said, returning to his commanding tone. “We have to go. The Buyer wants to see us first.”
“What do we do with the photos?” Leo asked.
—We’ll take them. And the crowbar too. If the guy from ’42 was following us, we’re going to have to pay him a special visit tonight.
“Tonight?” Sarah squealed. “But my parents…!”
—Your parents will think you’re sleeping at Emma’s, like always. Move it! Now!
The frenzy of movement resumed. Young hands picking up loot from the floor, the sound of zippers closing, the clinking of jewelry disappearing into backpacks.
“Wait,” said the boy in boots suddenly. “I’ve dropped an earring.” He rolled over.
I saw a large, calloused hand reach down to the floor. Into the darkness beneath the bed.
My lungs burned from lack of air. I pressed myself against the back wall, drawing my legs up as much as I could, praying that the shadows would be enough.
My hand felt across the carpet. My fingers brushed against a wisp of fluff just inches from my nose. If I moved my head, he’d see me. If I breathed heavily, he’d hear me.
“Do you have it or not?” Lily grumbled from the doorway.
—I don’t see it… wait.
The boy’s fingers moved a little further. They brushed against the fabric of my sleeve.
I froze, waiting for the scream, waiting for the discovery. My mind, in an act of desperation, was already calculating how to get out, how to confront three teenagers, how to explain why I was spying on my own daughter.
“Leave it alone!” Lily ordered. “It’s just a trinket. Let’s go, we’re late.”
The hand stopped. It hesitated for a second. The fingers closed into a fist and withdrew.
—Okay, okay. I’m coming.
The boy stood up. I watched the boots walk away.
“Let’s go through the back door,” Lily said. “And wipe your shoes on the carpet before you go out. If my mother sees mud in the hall, she’ll be furious about cleaning it.”
The irony of her comment almost made me burst out laughing hysterically. She was worried I’d get angry about the mud, not about the fact that she was the head of a criminal gang.
They left the room. I heard their footsteps coming down the stairs, this time faster, less cautious. I heard the back door open and close. The click of the automatic lock.
And then, silence.
A dense, heavy silence that felt like a slab on my chest.
I waited a full two minutes. Then five. Only when I was absolutely sure they were gone did I dare to exhale. The air left my lungs in a ragged sob.
I crawled out from under the bed like a wounded animal. My limbs were numb, but I felt no physical pain. My mind was shattered.
I stood up and looked around the room. It was the same as before. Spotless. Tidy. A model child’s room. But now, every stuffed animal, every book on the shelf, seemed like a lie. A set designed to deceive me.
My gaze fell to the floor, where the boy had been searching for the earring. There, half-hidden by the bed leg, lay a scrap of paper. It must have fallen from the folder when Lily snatched it from Leo.
I bent down and picked it up with trembling hands. It was a photograph printed on ordinary paper.
In the grainy image, taken from a distance with a telephoto lens, Lily was visible. She was standing on a street corner, talking to a tall man who had his back to the camera. The man was wearing a long gray coat. But what made my heart stop wasn’t the man.
That’s what Lily was holding in her hand in the photo.
A gun.
And she didn’t seem scared. She seemed to be examining her, weighing her up, with the same coldness with which she would examine a piece of fruit in the supermarket.
I turned the paper over. There was something written in red marker, an angular and aggressive handwriting:
*PROJECT CHRYSALIS – SUBJECT 1: ACTIVE.*
The world started spinning. I sat on my daughter’s bed, crumpling the photo in my hand. Subject 1? Active? What the hell was going on?
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