Chapter Four – Crossing the Line
I didn’t realize how loud the city was until silence became impossible. The hum of cars, the voices spilling out of open windows, even the distant wail of sirens—it all pressed against me as I walked home from the diner that night, my feet heavy, my chest tighter than it had ever been. I clutched my bag close to me, like the meager tips stuffed inside could shield me from the number screaming in my head. One hundred and fifty-five thousand.
The debt sat on my shoulders like a living thing. Every step felt like I was dragging it with me, chains clinking even when the streets were empty. I kept thinking about what Dad had said—about how there was no way out. But I couldn’t accept that. If I accepted it, I’d sink.
The apartment was dark when I unlocked the door. For a moment I stood there, holding my breath, listening. I half-expected to find strangers waiting for me, the men who left the note, the ones who said my name like it already belonged to them. But there was nothing. Just the faint smell of whiskey and the muffled sound of Dad snoring from his room.
I closed the door quietly and leaned against it. My hands shook. Fear was eating me alive, and I hated it. I hated feeling powerless.
That night I didn’t even try to sleep. I sat at the tiny kitchen table with my notebook open in front of me. I wrote lists—ways to make money, ways to hide, even impossible ideas like winning the lottery or running away to another country. The page filled with nonsense until my handwriting grew sloppy and blurred. Finally, I shoved the notebook away and dropped my head into my hands.
I needed more than hope. I needed something real.
The next morning, I forced myself to face the world again. At the diner, I plastered on a smile, but my coworkers could tell something was wrong. Carla, who’d been at the counter for almost twenty years, squeezed my arm when I spilled coffee on the wrong table. “You okay, honey?” she whispered.
I nodded too quickly. “Just tired.”
It was a lie, and I knew she didn’t believe me, but she let it go. I was grateful. If I had to explain, if I had to say the number out loud again, I’d break.
My break came, and I found myself wandering outside instead of eating. The sun was too bright, the world too normal. I stood on the sidewalk, staring at the traffic lights changing colors, watching people in suits hurry past me like they had places to be that actually mattered. For a second, I envied them. For a second, I wanted to be anyone but Annabel Johnson.
That was when I saw him.
Not Alexander—not yet—but one of the men who had shown up at the diner before. He was across the street, leaning against a lamppost like he belonged there, like he had all the time in the world. His eyes met mine, and a cold shiver ran through me. He didn’t smile. He didn’t wave. He just watched.
I turned and walked back inside before my knees could give out.
From that moment, I knew the clock was ticking faster than Dad thought. They weren’t just waiting. They were circling.
By the time my shift ended, my chest was burning with restless panic. I couldn’t go home, not yet. The idea of sitting in that dim apartment with Dad drinking himself into numbness while I waited for the next knock on the door made me want to scream.
So instead, I walked. I walked without thinking, my feet carrying me farther into the city, into streets I didn’t usually visit. And that’s when the line appeared. Not a literal one, but a choice that felt like crossing into another world.
It was late evening when I stopped outside a building I’d never had the nerve to approach before. Tall, glass windows glimmered in the fading light, reflecting the wealth of the city back at me like a cruel mirror. I knew this place—it was one of the corporate towers that belonged to Alexander Knight. I’d read about him in the papers, overheard customers talking about him at the diner. Ruthless. Untouchable. Billionaire in every headline, like his name and power were inseparable.
I didn’t know why I’d stopped there. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was desperation. But as I stood on the sidewalk, staring up at that building, a thought lodged in my mind and refused to leave.
Men like him had money to burn. Money they didn’t even notice missing. Money that could erase one hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars like it was pocket change.
The thought scared me, but it also made my pulse race. What would it take to get close to someone like him? What would it take to convince a man like Alexander Knight to care about someone like me?
The answer should have been obvious: nothing. Billionaires didn’t care about girls who smelled like grease from the diner, who counted every dollar like it was gold. But desperation twists logic. Desperation makes impossible things seem worth trying.
I stayed there until the city lights flickered on. Until I realized how strange I must look, loitering outside his building. Until shame flushed through me and I turned away.
But I knew something had shifted. I’d crossed a line inside myself, even if I hadn’t stepped through those glass doors. I’d allowed the thought in. I’d allowed the possibility that the solution to my nightmare might not come from working harder or begging Dad to sober up—it might come from stepping into a world I didn’t belong to.
When I finally walked home, the streets felt different. The city didn’t seem so loud anymore—it seemed like it was whispering, pushing me toward a future I couldn’t see clearly.
That night, lying awake again, I thought about the man across the street, the silent threat in his eyes. I thought about the tower of glass and steel, glowing like it was alive. And most of all, I thought about my father’s voice, broken and hopeless, telling me there was no way out.
Maybe he was right. Maybe there wasn’t. But I couldn’t let that be the end of our story. If I had to beg, if I had to bargain, if I had to sell pieces of myself I wasn’t ready to lose—I’d do it.
Because sometimes crossing the line isn’t about choice. Sometimes it’s about survival.
And I wasn’t ready to surrender, not yet.