Chapter Three – The Debt
If fear had a sound, it would be silence. That’s what filled the apartment after my father’s words. The mess around us spoke louder than he did—drawers yanked open, papers scattered, the faint smell of whiskey clinging to the air.
I sat on the couch, gripping the crumpled note I’d brought home from the diner. PAY OR ELSE. My fingers ached from holding it too tightly.
“Dad,” I said quietly. “How much?”
He didn’t answer right away. He rubbed his hands over his face, as if maybe if he pressed hard enough, he could push the truth back in. Finally, he sighed, his voice raw. “Too much, Annie.”
I hated when he called me that, not because of the name itself, but because it reminded me of the girl I used to be—the girl who believed her father could fix everything. “Tell me the number,” I pressed.
He dropped his hands and looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot, tired, older than his years. “one hundred and fifty-five thousand.”
For a moment, the world tilted. I thought maybe I’d misheard him. “One hundred and fifty-five…?”
“Thousand.” He slumped further into the chair, his shoulders collapsing inward. “It wasn’t supposed to get this bad. I kept thinking I could win it back, make it even. But luck… luck’s a cruel thing.”
I stared at him, my breath shallow. One hundred and fifty-five thousand. My mind tried to do the math—how many shifts at the diner, how many babysitting jobs, how many nights scrubbing someone else’s floors. The answer was impossible. I could work myself to the bone for the next ten years and still not see that kind of money.
My stomach twisted. “How could you let it get this far?”
His face crumpled. “I didn’t mean to. After your mother…” His voice broke, and for a second, I saw the grief he carried like a ghost. But grief didn’t excuse this. Not the men showing up at my job. Not the wrecked apartment. Not the number that felt like a death sentence.
“They’re not going to just walk away, are they?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“No,” he whispered. “These men… they don’t forgive. They don’t forget. If I don’t pay them back soon, they’ll come for more than threats.”
I felt cold all over. My world had always been small, but at least it was safe. Now, even that safety had been ripped away. I couldn’t protect us from this. I couldn’t even protect myself.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” My voice cracked.
“Because you’re my daughter, not my savior,” he snapped, sudden fire in his tone. But it wasn’t anger at me—it was shame. He looked away quickly, like he couldn’t bear to see the disappointment on my face.
I wanted to scream, to cry, to tell him he’d ruined everything. But the words lodged in my throat. I couldn’t hurt him more than he’d already hurt himself. So instead, I sat there, staring at the mess, the silence between us heavy enough to crush me.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay on my narrow bed, staring at the ceiling, the number echoing in my mind. One hundred and fifty-five thousand. It felt like a chain wrapped around my chest, tightening with every breath.
I thought about the men at the diner, the way they’d said my name like they owned it. I thought about the apartment, ransacked like we were nothing more than pawns in someone else’s game. I thought about my father, broken and drowning, and how I was chained to him whether I liked it or not.
At some point, I sat up and pulled out one of my notebooks. I wrote without thinking, words spilling onto the page like water from a cracked dam. Fear. Anger. Desperation. I wrote until my hand ached, until the ink smeared across my palm. It didn’t fix anything, but it was the only thing that kept me from screaming into the dark.
The next morning, I tried to go about my routine. Tried to pretend normal still existed. But the cracks were too deep. At the diner, I couldn’t focus. Every time the doorbell chimed, my stomach lurched, terrified it would be those men again. Customers asked for refills and I gave them wrong orders. Mrs. Porter snapped at me twice, her sharp eyes narrowing like she knew something was off.
On my break, I called Dad. He didn’t answer. I tried again at lunch, again at closing. Nothing. By the time I walked home, dread gnawed at me.
The apartment was dark when I unlocked the door. For a terrifying moment, I thought maybe they’d taken him. But then I heard the sound of ice clinking in a glass. Relief hit me, followed by anger.
He was sitting at the table, a bottle of whiskey half-empty in front of him.
“Dad,” I said, dropping my bag with a thud. “You can’t drink right now. You need to think. We need to think.”
He looked at me, his eyes glazed. “What’s there to think about, Annie? We’re done. They’ll take everything. Maybe even—” He stopped, his throat working.
“Don’t say it.” My voice shook.
He slammed the glass down, the sound making me flinch. “What do you want me to do? I can’t pull one hundred and fifty-five thousand out of thin air!”
“And I can’t either!” I shot back. “But we can’t just sit here waiting for them to destroy us. There has to be something. Some way.”
The words hung between us, desperate and hollow. He shook his head slowly. “Sometimes there’s no way out.”
I refused to believe that. If I let myself believe that, then we were already finished.
That night, I lay awake again, staring into the dark. My notebooks sat on the nightstand, but even writing couldn’t save me this time. My chest ached with the weight of it all. For years, I’d endured, carried everything on my back, convinced I could handle it. But this was different. This was bigger than me. Bigger than us.
Still, somewhere deep inside, a stubborn spark burned. I wouldn’t give up—not yet. There had to be something. A solution hidden in the shadows, waiting for me to find it.
I didn’t know then what form it would take. I didn’t know it would come wrapped in power, in arrogance, in the cold eyes of a man who could change everything.
All I knew was that my father’s debt wasn’t just his anymore. It was mine too. And whether I wanted it or not, my life would never be the same.