“Sign the paper, Lucas,” Oliver says, his tone turning cold and final as he tosses a pen and a rubber stamp onto the table in front of me.
“I’m tired of talking,” he mutters, leaning back with a smirk, dragging on his cigarette. “I need to go get my dick wet.”
My hand trembles as I reach for the paper, fingers barely steady enough to hold it. My mother lurches toward me, panic in her voice, but the man behind her grips her tighter. I hear her crying, those broken sounds I used to hate as a kid. I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek, trying to keep my hands from shaking as my eyes scan the page.
One hundred and twenty thousand.
Due in four months.
The letters blur. The numbers burn into my brain.
I close my eyes, just for a second. To breathe. To pretend I’m anywhere else. That I’m not here. That I’m not paying the price for a life I never asked to be born into. That someone else’s shame didn’t end up in my hands.
“Sign it, Lucas,” Oliver growls. The threat is sharp now, coiled in his voice like something about to snap. “Don’t make me use force.”
My eyelids flutter open. I glance at him — at his face, smug and ugly — and then down at the pen.
Why do I always have to pay for her choices?
I reach for it. My fingers close around the pen, cold and slick with sweat. I brace to sign. I brace to sell my soul again.
And then— I hear it.
The low, unmistakable growl of an engine outside. Deep. Smooth. Powerful.
An Escalade, I know it is because Alex has one, and I very much know the sound of it. I freeze, the pen hovering just above the paper.
Then I hear a second engine pull up beside it.
Oliver’s eyes narrow.
“You expecting someone, boss?” one of the men asks.
Oliver doesn’t answer right away. He looks at me. Look through me.
His brow twitches. Then he lets out a slow, disbelieving dry laugh.
“There’s no way,” he mutters. “No. Fucking. Way.”
My heart is pounding so loudly I can barely hear. My chest rises and falls like I just came up from drowning.
It can’t be.
There is no way that is Alex.
Before I can blink, Oliver pulls out a gun and points it directly at my face. I feel my mother stiffen, and I swallow, my body tensing.
“Go outside,” Oliver says, his voice calm, lethal. “Finish off whoever that is.”
He doesn’t look away from me, and neither do I. My heart is pounding so loud I think it might shake loose from my chest. I hear the heavy steps of the two men moving toward the door, the creak of it swinging open. Then—
Chaos.
Grunts.
Fists slamming into flesh.
One of them screams.
