Breaking Midnight (Il Paradosso Series Book One)

Chapter one

"Tutti colpevoli, nessuno colpevole"

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The city that never sleeps. Where dreams and opportunities come to life. The city of solid concrete and never-ending traffic, of bright lights and dark alleyways. The perfect place to get mugged, kidnapped or witness your first murder.

Or murders.

The taste of fresh blood splattering over my uniform, and partially into my mouth, hadn't exactly been the expectations of a repetitious night shift.

I must have blacked out for a second because when I came to, another gunshot had my ears ringing, which ended with a deafening silence.
I could feel my heart beating out of my chest as I stood against the cold stone, hoping that my loud breathing wouldn't give away my presence.

Watching dumbfounded as the events before me unraveled, Norman's horrified eyes were engraved into my memory, moments before he was gunned down.

The act alone placed me in a catatonic state, afraid to blink away the tiny speck of blood that had lodged itself into my eyeball, the sting inducing a twitch.

I had been the last person he'd seen before the life was stolen from him. The thoughts that must’ve gone through his head when the bullet pierced through the bones and cartilage of his skull. A sight that I wouldn't wish upon the worst of my enemies.

Norman had plausibly heard the second gunshot and Ramona's bloodcurdling scream, seconds before she hit the solid ground next to him. For it’s the sense known to die last.

The place I'd once so eagerly wanted to escape to for a fresh start, had indeed turned into renditions of a pusillanimous nightmare. A new life with new surroundings was going to be good for me, or so, I had thought.

Six months in and I was yet to adapt to the fast lane and busy nightlife I wasn't regularly accustomed to for the past six years. Therefore, I'd made a deal with myself to not let it get to me. I didn't want to end up regretting my choices. New York City was a giant.  It could easily chew you up and spit you out, just like it had done to so many my age.

Although we no longer lived in the nineteen hundreds, when the Irish gangs terrorized the Lower East side, or the Italian Mafia kept the little Italy district in a chokehold, there were still parts of the city that I steered clear of.

The party girl in me had taken the short way out, avoiding paths that could veer me into the hole I’d barely dug myself out of. My friends on the other hand, were extremely good at balancing between their daily habits and partying lifestyle, and I was envious of that.

I didn't come from wealth, so a nine-to-five was a sin qua non and working at this small diner was helping me pay the bills while searching for my dream job, if that actually existed.

It had been the end of yet another tedious night shift, prolonged by my unyielding offer to help Norman and his wife tie a few loose ends, before locking up for the evening. It was an act of munificence that I would later come to regret.

I had been hoping for a long and uneventful weekend. But tonight, years of upholding an image detached from what took shitloads of therapy and large chunks of cash out of my depleted bank account, would go down the New York City drain.

Here I was, crunched in between two garbage containers, silently praying that they were tall enough to block complete view of my petrified face and trembling demeanor.