Chapter 2: The Bag Retrieval
The air in the fashion department after hours held a different kind of silence. It was the quiet of paused creativity, of machines gone cold and scissors laid to rest. The scent of synthetic dyes and steaming fabric lingered, sharp and chemical, undercut by the wax-polished floor of the main runway mockup.
Leonid found Sabrina there.
She wasn’t the ringleader he’d pictured. No cocky arrogance, no mean-girl smirk. She was hunched over a sewing machine at the far end of the room, a single work lamp casting a stark cone of light onto her hands, which were frantically guiding black chiffon under a flashing needle. Her shoulders were tense knots under a worn university hoodie.
He didn’t announce himself. He simply walked, his boots silent on the polished wood, until he stood at the edge of her light pool. His shadow fell across her worktable, long and consuming.
Sabrina jumped, her hand slipping. The needle came down with a sickening crack, missing the fabric and snapping clean. She whirled, a gasp stuck in her throat.
He was just… there. Towering, immovable. His black curls fell over a forehead that seemed carved from stone, his dark eyes absorbing the light without reflecting it. He smelled of cold air and cigarette smoke.
“Sabrina.” Her name wasn’t a question.
“Who are you?” she breathed, scrambling off her stool, putting the table between them. Her eyes darted to the only exit, now blocked by his frame.
“Jennie Kim’s bag. The Valentino. Pink. Crystal clasp.” His voice was flat, each word a measured drop in the silent room. “You took it.”
Her bravado was brittle, a thin glaze over sheer panic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Leonid took one slow step forward. The wood creaked under his weight. He didn’t blink. “Don’t waste my time. I saw the security footage from the main hall. You snatched it. You and your two friends.”
The fight drained from her. Her shoulders slumped. She looked at her hands, stained with ink and pinpricks. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Describe it.”
“She… she flaunts it,” Sabrina spat, the bitterness sudden and hot. “Every day. Thousands of dollars worth of fabric hanging off her, while the rest of us are eating instant noodles for the third week straight to afford our materials. She wears that purse like it’s a toy. It’s obscene.”
“That isn’t your property to judge,” Leonid said. His tone hadn’t changed. It was a statement of fact. “Where is it?”
Sabrina laughed, a short, harsh sound. “Gone.”
He went very still. The air grew colder. “Explain.”
“I sold it.” She lifted her chin, a defiance born of utter exhaustion. “Online. A consignment site for luxury goods. It was gone within an hour.”
Silence stretched, thick and charged. Leonid processed this. The petty theft he’d expected. This was something else. A transaction. An erasure.
“The money,” he finally said.
“What about it?”
“Where is the money?”
“Gone, too,” she whispered, her defiance crumbling. She looked past him, at the dark, empty runway where Jennie often preened. “My tuition for next semester. It was pay that or drop out. My scholarship only covers so much. My dad got laid off.” She said it like a confession, like it was shameful. “It was just a bag. To her, it’s just another bag. To me, it was my future.”
Leonid listened. He saw the dark circles under her eyes, the raw cuticle on her thumb, the cheap, over-washed hoodie. He saw the desperation that wasn’t acted. He’d seen it before, in other lives, in the memories he kept locked away. This wasn’t cruelty. This was survival.
Jennie’s tear-stained face from last night flashed in his mind—the sheer, universe-ending tragedy of it. The feel of her on his lap, the silk, the naive warmth.
“She wants it back,” he said, more to himself than to Sabrina.
“She can’t have it back,” Sabrina replied, her voice hollow. “It’s in Milan by now, probably. Or Dubai. I can’t… I can’t get it back even if I wanted to. The money is spent.”
He pulled out his cigarette case, a sleek black slab of metal. He didn’t light one. He just clicked it open, stared at the neat white row inside, and clicked it shut. The sound was final.
Sabrina flinched.
“Your friends,” he said, shifting topics. “They were in on it.”
“No,” she said quickly, too quickly. “They just… they provided a distraction. They didn’t know I was going to sell it. They thought it was just a prank.”
“You used them.”
She had no answer to that. She just wrapped her arms around herself.
Leonid looked at her. Really looked. He saw the weight of the choice she’d made, the dirty taste of it in her mouth. Punishing her wouldn’t materialize the bag. It wouldn’t un-spend the tuition money. It would just be another form of cruelty, one he had no personal stake in.
He exhaled, a slow, tired sound. “If you come near her again,” he said, the words low and precise, “if you so much as look at another one of her possessions, I won’t come to talk. I’ll come with the university’s disciplinary board, the city police for grand theft, and a civil suit from the Kim family that will follow you into every design house you ever apply to. Your future will be over in every conceivable way. Do you understand?”
She nodded, a quick, jerky motion, tears of relief and shame welling in her eyes.
“Your friends are no longer your friends. You will avoid them. You will never speak of this. If Jennie asks you about the bag, you will tell her you made a mistake and threw it in the river in a fit of jealousy. You are pathetic and you regret it.”
“Okay,” she choked out.
He turned to leave.
“Wait,” Sabrina called out, her voice small. “What are you going to tell her?”
Leonid paused but didn’t turn back. He stared into the darkness of the department hallway. He thought of Jennie’s expectant, spoiled face, waiting for her trophy to be returned.
“That’s my problem,” he said, and walked out.
He lit a cigarette the moment he hit the cold night air, the smoke a gray plume against the starless sky. The bag was gone. The problem remained. He had promised to fix it, and his promises were iron. He smoked halfway down to the filter, the ember glowing brightly with each drag, before pulling out his phone.
He navigated to a luxury consignment website, his face illuminated by the sterile blue light. He typed in a search: Valentino. Pink. Crystal Clasp.
One listing appeared. A stock photo. ‘SOLD’ was stamped across it in bold red letters.
He took a screenshot. He would have to tell her. He would have to see the confused hurt in her eyes curdle into another storm of tears. He would have to endure the weight of her disappointment, a weight he had carried since they were children. He flicked the cigarette butt into a puddle, where it died with a hiss.
The solution, when it came to him, was simple. It would cost money. A lot of it. His own.
He pulled up a different site, one he used for more discreet transactions. His fingers moved with decisive taps. He found what he was looking for. New. Current Season. Pink. Crystal Clasp.
He placed the order. One-click. Overnight shipping.
It wasn’t the same bag. It would be newer. Perhaps even more expensive. She might notice. She probably wouldn’t. The crisis would be averted. Her world, so carefully insulated, would remain intact.
He put his phone away and started the long walk back to the car, the ghost of her vanilla scent replaced by the city’s cold, indifferent grime. His duty, as always, was not to justice or truth. It was to her. To the quiet. To maintaining the fragile, velvet-lined cage she called her life.
He already needed another cigarette.