Chapter 1 #3
“You have a few days to think about it,” Scarface says. “Then we come back. And trust me, you don’t want us to come back.” He looks at the men as Brooke screams for security. “Let’s go.”
They release me, and I crumple to the ground, gasping for air that won’t come. My stomach is on fire. My vision swims.
I hear their footsteps retreating, fading into the distance. But another pair is running toward me. My friend falls to her knees beside me, her voice trembling. “Are you okay? Who were they?”
I drag myself to a sitting position, still trying to catch my breath.
“Come on,” Brooke says, grabbing my arm. “Get up. Can you stand?”
“I’m fine,” I mutter, struggling to stand and failing.
“No you’re not. Lean on me.” She hauls me upright, and I let her because my legs aren’t entirely cooperating. Her arm goes around my waist, and we move toward the ER entrance slowly, my gait unsteady. “Will you just lean on me, damn it! Stop trying to be tough right now.”
I don’t argue. I don’t have the energy.
She settles me in the nearest exam room and is already pulling on gloves when Peter, one of the night security guards, appears in the doorway. He’s out of breath, radio in hand.
“I checked the whole lot,” he says. “Nothing. They must have bolted when I called it in. Did you get a look at them? Do you know who they were?”
I shake my head.
He lingers a moment, then nods and leaves.
The silence stretches for about three seconds before Brooke says flatly, “You’re lying.”
I close my eyes. “I guess that means we’ve known each other too long.”
“Miranda.” She tilts my chin up to get a better look at the damage around my eye, her touch gentle, her voice anything but. “Who were they? What did they want?”
I let out a gust of air. “Loan sharks. They were Kozlov’s people.”
Brooke pulls back to look at me, her eyes widening. “Wait, I thought you’d paid that off. You said you were handling it.”
“I am handling it. I just haven’t finished paying the interest yet.
” I pause while she presses a cold pack to my eye and I hiss through my teeth.
“I haven’t even touched the principal.” I let out a short, humorless laugh.
“If my apartment wasn’t under rent control, I’d already be on the street.
And now he sent them to offer an alternative.
Which apparently involves me being significantly less clothed.
When I said no, they decided to make their point another way. ”
Brooke’s hands go still. “They cannot do that,” she bursts out fiercely. “That’s illegal. That’s assault, that’s coercion, that’s—”
“I know what it is.” My voice sounds weary even to my ears. “I just have to figure out what to do about it.”
I stare at the ceiling. I’ve been thinking about picking up private home nursing on the side. The pay is decent, sometimes better than decent. It would mean longer hours on top of already brutal shifts, but maybe I could get ahead of the payments even slightly.
Even as I think it, something hollow settles in my chest. I’m already working myself into the ground. There are only so many hours in a day.
“Peter could walk you to your car after your shifts,” Brooke says, smoothing a piece of tape over the gauze at my brow. “We can ask him. He won’t mind.”
“How is that going to help?” The words come out sharper than I mean them to. “They know where I live, Brooke. A security guard walking me thirty feet across a parking lot isn’t going to change that.”
She opens her mouth and then closes it.
“Let’s just go,” I say, sliding off the table.
“We could still get something to eat. The diner—”
“I’m not hungry.” I pick up my bag. “Come on. I’ll drop you home.”
She doesn’t push me, but I catch her shooting worried looks my way throughout the drive. I ignore them, not in the mood for a pep talk or comfort. I drop Brooke at her building, wave off her look, and keep driving.
My apartment is on the fourth floor of a building that tries harder than it manages. The hallway carpet is clean but worn thin. The elevator works most of the time.
I push through the door and drop my bag by the entrance.
My place itself is barely furnished now.
The good pieces went first, the dining table my mother left me, the armchair I saved up three months to buy, the bookshelf that used to take up the whole wall.
What’s left is what didn’t sell. A mattress on a frame.
A kitchen with just enough counter space.
One secondhand couch I reupholstered myself because it was too worn for anyone to want.
There’s a ghost of a life in here if you know where to look, indentations in the carpet where furniture used to sit, empty corners that used to hold something worth keeping.
I drop my bag by the door, kick off my shoes, and make it as far as the couch before my legs give out.
Two years ago, I had dreams.
My mother’s illness took them all from me.
And now, I don’t know who I am anymore.
As I doze off on the couch, I dream of being chased in parking lots by burly men and the sound of a wolf howling in the distance.