Chapter 9
I didn't tell him I was going to pay them myself. That was the point.
The morning after he lied to me about the debt, I stood at the kitchen island and watched him take his coffee black, his neck tattoos stark against his white undershirt, and I realized I couldn't afford to trust his version of protection anymore. He'd said the papers showed interest, not a new principal. He'd looked me in the eye when he said it. And I'd found the second ledger page in the office trash with the number doubled. He thought if he kept me inside the mansion walls, I'd stay safe and stay quiet.
I waited until he left for the warehouse. His black truck pulled down the long county road at 8:14. I counted to sixty after the gate clicked, then I pulled my old phone from the laundry basket where I'd hidden it.
I hadn't thrown it away. The crew's number was still there, under a blocked contact. You have one hour, Sadia. That voice had lived in my head for eight days.
I told myself I wasn't calling them. I was calling about a job. A diner off Highway 17 had a help-wanted sign I'd seen on my day off two weeks before. Cash tips, night shift, no questions asked. If I could work 6 to 2 and be back before he noticed, I could put three hundred a week toward the principal without him controlling every dollar. It felt like autonomy. It felt like not owing a man who could bury a crew with one sentence.
The diner manager, Marla, remembered me. "Honey, you still in that maid uniform? You can start tonight. Six o'clock."
I said yes before I could rethink it. My knuckles throbbed around the phone. I hung up and immediately the screen lit up again. Unknown number. Same crew prefix.
I shouldn't have answered. But my hand moved before my brain did.
"Sadia." The same flat voice. "Thought you blocked us. Your boss man told us to stay away from the boy. He didn't say nothing about you calling us."
My breath caught. "I didn't call you."
"You called out. We got pings. You want to make a payment, Sadia? We can do that now. Or you want us to come collect at that diner? Marla's place, right? Nice parking lot."
Ice went down my spine. I hadn't said the diner name. They were listening, or watching, or Marla knew someone. I pressed my back against the cream paneled wall of the laundry room, the same wall I'd slumped against that first night.
"Please stay away from my brother," I whispered, and hated that it was the same plea as that first night.
"You got forty-eight hours to bring five thousand to the gas station on Route 9. Come alone. Don't bring tattoos. He touches us, price goes up."
The line went dead.
I stood there with the phone hot in my hand, my chest heaving. I'd tried to get a second job to get free of the debt, and in one call I'd handed them my location, my plan, and a reason to bypass him entirely.
I scrubbed the call log, hid the phone, and went back to folding his shirts like nothing had happened. But my hands wouldn't stop shaking.
He knew by three o'clock. I heard the front door slam harder than usual. His boots hit the hallway wood.
"Sadia," he called. Not angry yet. Just sharp.
I came out of the kitchen, wiping my hands on my apron. He held out my old phone. The dark case I'd thought I'd hidden so well.
"Want to explain why my security guy flagged an outgoing call to the number that's been threatening your brother?" His voice was low, restrained, the way it got before he broke something. His black satin shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, tattoos pulling with his jaw.
I swallowed. "I was looking for work."
"Work." He set the phone down on the hall table with a click. "At Marla's diner. On Highway 17. Six to two. You were going to walk to a night shift and carry cash past the same crew that's been hunting you?"
"You read my messages?"
"I pay for the watcher who keeps you alive," he said. "You re-engaged them, Sadia. You gave them a meet. Route 9, five thousand, alone. You think that's autonomy? That's bait."
"It's my debt," I said, and my voice finally cracked. "It's my brother. You lied to me about how much I owe. You want me locked in this house while you decide what I'm allowed to know. I can't live like that. I need to do something."
He stepped closer, and I could smell coffee and cedar on him, and I could see the muscle jumping in his cheek. He didn't touch me.
"You think I want you dependent?" he said quietly. "I want you breathing. You go to that gas station alone, you don't come back with a receipt, you come back in a trunk. You understand me?"
"Then tell me the truth," I shot back. "All of it. Not the edited version."
For a second his stern expression slipped, and I saw something raw underneath. Fear, maybe. Or guilt.
"I didn't tell you the full number because you were already not sleeping," he said. "It was twenty-two, not twelve. With their interest it's twenty-eight now. I was trying to keep you from doing exactly what you just did."
Twenty-eight thousand. My knees went soft. I caught the door trim.
"And they know about the diner," I whispered. "They knew the name."
His eyes narrowed. "That's why you don't go. They were waiting for you to move without me. Now they know you'll break my perimeter if you feel trapped."
We stared at each other in that hallway, the same hallway where he'd first said, "Who is threatening you?" The warm light made his tattoos look darker.
"I'm not forbidding you to work," he said after a long pause. His voice dropped. "I'm forbidding you to pay them alone. You want a shift? You take it inside this house. You want to earn? I'll put the money in an account in your name, for your brother, not for them. But you don't call that number again. Ever."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to say I didn't want his money. But the phone on the table buzzed again. Crew flashing unknown.
He looked at it, then at me. He didn't answer. He just let it ring, his gaze locked on mine, until it went to voicemail.
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"They're back in," he said. "Because you let them back in. Now I have to clean it up. And you're going to let me."
I didn't say yes. I didn't say no. I just stood there, breathing hard, my red knuckles hidden in my apron, knowing my attempt to be independent had just made us both less safe.
