A beggar who became a billionaire

Chapter 7: What the Phone Knew

Andre did not go back to his room that night.

He walked the streets until the sky turned grey, his mind replaying the warehouse over and over. Mara's shoulder slamming into his chest. Her voice, sharp and certain. Go. Now.

By the time the sun rose, he had made a decision.

He was going back.

Marrow Street looked different in daylight. Quiet. Ordinary. The kind of street nobody would ever suspect of holding secrets.

Andre found the warehouse easily enough, the same cracked pavement, the same faded number seventeen painted above the door.

The door was locked.

Andre pressed his face against the dusty window beside it, cupping his hands around his eyes to block the morning glare.

The warehouse was empty.

Not just empty of people. Empty of everything. No table. No lamp. No overturned chair from Mara's fight with Grant. No sign that anyone had ever set foot inside, let alone fought for their life there only hours before.

Andre's stomach dropped.

He tried the door again, rattling the handle uselessly, then walked around to the back alley where he had escaped the night before. Even the alley looked wrong somehow, too clean, too quiet, as if the entire street had been wiped of any proof that Callum Voss, or Grant, or Mara had ever existed.

"They do that," a voice said behind him.

Andre spun around fast, fists raised, before he recognized the old woman standing a few feet away. Mrs. Duvall, from the vegetable stall at the market, wrapped in a heavy shawl despite the morning heat.

"Mrs. Duvall." Andre lowered his hands, embarrassed. "You startled me."

"You look terrible, boy." She studied him with sharp, knowing eyes. "Whatever happened to you last night, it is still sitting on your face."

Andre hesitated. "You said they do that. What did you mean?"

Mrs. Duvall glanced up and down the empty street before answering, her voice dropping low. "This is not the first time that a warehouse has emptied overnight. Happened once before, years back. Police came, found nothing, and stopped asking questions the very same week." She shook her head slowly. "Whoever owns that building has friends in places that make problems disappear."

"Do you know who owns it?"

"No, and neither does anyone else who wants to keep breathing." Mrs. Duvall's eyes flicked down to Andre's jacket pocket, where the shape of the phone was barely visible beneath the fabric. "Whatever you are mixed up in, boy, be careful. This city eats people like you for breakfast."

She walked away without waiting for an answer, leaving Andre alone on the empty street with nothing but questions and a growing, sick feeling that he had lost Mara before he had even had the chance to truly know her.

Back in his room above the shoe shop, Andre sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out the phone.

"Show me something," he said quietly, knowing it would not answer, knowing it never answered questions directly. "Please. Show me if she is alive."

The screen stayed dark for a long moment.

Then, slowly, it lit up.

Andre's heart leapt, hope flooding through him for just a second, before the words on the screen crushed it flat again.

[REQUEST DENIED.]

[THE PHONE DOES NOT ANSWER QUESTIONS.]

[THE PHONE PROVIDES OPPORTUNITIES.]

Andre's jaw tightened in frustration. "Then give me an opportunity. Give me something I can actually use."

As if it had been waiting for exactly those words, the screen flickered and changed.

GAME: none

EVENT: PRIVATE AUCTION

LOCATION: HARWICK GALLERY

DATE: THREE DAYS FROM NOW

ITEM: UNLISTED

POTENTIAL VALUE: SIGNIFICANT

NOTE: A FAMILIAR FACE WILL BE PRESENT.

Andre stared at the words, his pulse quickening. This was different from anything the phone had shown him before. No numbers to memorize. No lottery balls to watch. An event. A location. A warning wrapped inside a promise.

A familiar face.

Voss, Andre thought immediately. Or Grant. Or worse, someone he had not even met yet.

Or maybe, a small and desperate part of him whispered, Mara.

Andre's hands tightened around the phone.

He had two hundred and ten dollars to his name, a locked room above a shoe shop, and a growing list of enemies who had already proven they would kill to take what he was holding.

And now the only lead he had, the only chance of learning anything real about the people hunting him, sat three days away inside a gallery he had never heard of, guarded by wealth and power far beyond anything he currently possessed.

Andre looked at his reflection in the dark corner of the window glass. Thin. Tired. Still wearing the same torn jacket he had been wearing the night Claire's father shut the door on him.

If he wanted to survive long enough to reach that auction, he could not walk in looking like the man he used to be.

He needed money. Real money. Enough to buy a suit, a story, a reason for people like Voss's world to believe he belonged there.

He looked back down at the phone screen, at the countdown quietly ticking beneath the auction details, counting down the hours until his next real chance.

Three days.

Whatever happened at that gallery, Andre understood one thing with sudden, cold clarity.

He was no longer simply trying to survive.

He was walking straight toward the people who had made Mara disappear, and he had absolutely no idea if he would be able to walk back out again.