The Arrangement

Chapter 1 - Vianna-1

Chapter 1 - Vianna

My head felt ready to explode, and my rug was going to sport holes from all of the pacing I was doing. For days, my anxiety and worry had been increasing, and now it was reaching a fever pitch.

My cell dug into my palm as I turned the corner for another circuit of my pacing. I had called all of Sage’s friends, all of my friends, everyone I could possibly think of. I had talked and asked questions and talked some more, enough to start losing my voice, but it didn’t matter. I hadn’t learned anything. Not even one lead.

Sage had disappeared without a trace, just upped and vanished.

My Sage. My beautiful daughter.

My beautiful adopted daughter. Half the time, I didn’t bother with that distinction, but when I had to file the missing person’s report, I had to mention that tidbit. Blood or not, she was my daughter, and she was all I had.

It had been five days—five long and trying days—since I last heard from her. She hadn’t been here when I came back from work. The nineteen-year-old was nowhere to be found.

Abruptly, I stopped my pacing and tried calling her best friend one more time, but Corinne didn’t answer. Yet again. She hadn’t answered any of my calls. At first, I hoped that meant she was with Sage, that the two of them had gone off somewhere together, that it wasn’t a big deal. A spur of the moment trip or girls’ getaway. But that hadn’t been the case. I became so desperate to get ahold of Corinne that I called up her mom. Turned out Corinne had gone on vacation with her boyfriend. Still, my hope refused to die. Maybe Sage had gone with them. Nope. Corinne’s mom said they’d left a week ago, but Sage had still been around then, so no dice.

Out of desperation, I dialed Sage for the hundredth, if not the thousandth, time. Like all the other times, it went straight to voicemail. She had a terrible habit of letting the battery run almost all the way down, and she had five or six chargers since she was always misplacing them, but if she didn’t have one, I’d never be able to get through to her unless she bought another one. Most likely, her phone was dead.

But was she dead, too? Of course, my mind went straight to the worst scenario. I loved Sage like she was my own child. Yeah, there were only eight years between us, but Sage had been mine ever since she turned fourteen. For five years, it had been the two of us. I tended to think of my life as before Sage and after. Before, my life had been nothing but quiet. With Sage, there was so much laughter and talking and even arguing, too. So much noise and music. Now, it was back to the quiet, and I never realized before just how unnerving it could be.

For years, my life had been devoted to my job. I gradually worked my way up the ladder and owned a restaurant. Sage’s mom used to work for me as a waitress until she ended up landing herself in jail. I knew she had been going down a dark path, and I’d hoped she would do the right thing for her daughter by keeping her employed despite her lack of work ethic, but that hadn’t been the case.

When she worked nights, she used to bring Sage into work. When I realized they were living out of their car, I had Quinn, my main chef, cook up meals for the girl to enjoy. It was the least I could do. I even helped her out with her homework a few times in between running the show. We got along better than she did with her mom. The two of them hardly ever spoke. I thought she embarrassed Sage, and honestly, I kind of was, too. If you saw the way she draped herself over guys to try to get tips...On more than one occasion I had to remind her she was serving customers who sat at a table, not dancing on top of the table, and if she didn’t stop, I would have to fire her because that was unacceptable. And then she would do better and behave for a little while until she wouldn’t.

Once her mom got arrested, things got really rocky for Sage, but it wasn’t until her mom wound up in jail serving her sentence that things really hit a low point. The idea of Sage being tossed to the wolves—I mean the state—tore me up. Starting about a month before the arrest, Sage came to the restaurant every day, even when her mom hadn’t been working. Her mom preferred her drugs too much to be much good at anything, whether being a waitress or being a mother. Just a few months prior to her sentencing, I had hired Sage as a dishwasher, and she proved to be a more devoted employee than her mom had been, though she did have a habit of talking too much instead of working. The two of us connected in a way she never had with her mom.

Adopting her had been a no-brainer. My own father had been a deadbeat, and my mom did everything she could for me until she died of a heart attack a few months after I turned eighteen, so I knew what it was like to be alone. I knew what it was like to have no one to look out for me except for myself. Life had dealt her a terrible hand, but that didn’t mean she should have limited options. Plus, I saw a lot of potential in her. I hadn’t let my trials prevent me from achieving my goals. I could be a business owner and a mom, too. I had the funds, the drive, and the determination.

I didn’t need a lot to make me happy, and I sure didn’t need a guy to make me happy. It was just Sage and me. We were more like sisters, considering our age difference. For five years now, I was her mom. I hadn’t even gone out on a lot of dates because guys didn’t want a woman with a kid. Okay, so maybe I used her as an excuse sometimes.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to date, but it always became the same old song and dance. Each one loved the idea of dating a businesswoman...at first. But when it meant time away from them and then being too tired for them after I spent all day long arguing with vendors or advertisers or dealing with customers or employees, they never asked for a long-term commitment, which was fine by me. I wasn’t ready to commit, not to any of them, at least. The number of guys calling me lately had diminished down to nothing, and it didn’t bother me any. It seriously didn’t.

Or maybe they couldn’t accept dating a woman with more ambition than they had ever possessed. Maybe I intimidated them. I could be a little, well, intense at times. “A little overbearing,” Sage called me a few times, and she might be right about that. I liked things to be done correctly, properly. Was that too much to ask? Have set goals and plans made things run smoother. It just did.

All of the guys who did have ambition were already taken. Of course. I had prioritized my career over having a family, but did that mean I had bypassed my chance at finding someone? If it had, oh well. I had a daughter. What more did I need?

But while I hadn’t dated anyone recently, Sage had. She was a gorgeous young lady, and she made guys’ heads turn. I tried to instill in her a sense of independence, to get her to see value in her own life so she didn’t need to rely on anyone else, especially a guy, but that was one area where she and I didn’t see eye to eye. Ever since middle school, she had had one boyfriend and hopped from him to another and another and so on, with one guy in particular being her “go-to.” Maybe her real mom hadn’t given her enough attention so she craved it elsewhere. But it bothered me. She shouldn’t define herself based on a relationship. She had the potential for so much more than just settling for being some guy’s girlfriend.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if her disappearance had something to do with a guy. Her current boyfriend was Trenton Young, a twenty-two-year-old who I hadn’t liked from the beginning, and he was the one she had dated longer than any of the others combined. He was a member of the motorcycle club Devil’s Horns.

He was also bad news.

Sage couldn’t see it, though. He wasn’t just a bad apple; he was a rotten one. But she was blinded by love. It wasn’t love. Maybe it was lust, but whatever it was, it wasn’t healthy. I liked to think that if she had picked a good guy, one with a promising future, I would have encouraged the relationship, but I couldn’t in good conscience sanction the one between her and Trenton. Between the way Trenton treated both Sage and me, and also the way she treated me when she was around him, it wasn’t good. She became moody and sullen and disrespectful, a completely new person.

Only once had Sage talked to me about her father, and it sounded like he had been just like mine, a deadbeat who never spent even one second caring for or loving his daughter. While my mom had grown up and matured from the need to have a guy when she had been left to raise me all alone, Sage’s mom had a string of bad relationships, one right after the other. It was no small wonder that Sage had followed at least partially in her mother’s footsteps, and Trenton was a bad relationship, that was for sure.

The only major issue I had with Sage—aside from her poor taste in guys—was her schooling. She had dropped out of high school and refused to go. Wouldn’t even bother to study and just get her GED. It had been a year after her mom went to jail that she dropped out. She told me she couldn’t stand the looks and the whispers about her mom, and I understood that. I really did. But when I suggested she go to a different school, she didn’t want to hear about it. That girl could argue with the best of them.

“They’ll find out about my mom soon enough, and it’ll start all over again,” she had said.

“You could take my last name,” I had suggested.

But she had shaken her head. “You’re young yet. You’ll have kids of your own. You’ll leave them the restaurant. As it should be. I appreciate you taking me in, but...”

She never did finish that statement.

Basically, she didn’t quite view me as her mom. And I guessed I was wearing a lot of hats considering I wasn’t just her mother but I was also her boss at the restaurant, even if she wasn’t a waitress and only did the dishes. She only ever called me mom when she wanted something—a dress, a purse, shoes, some money—which hurt, but I could understand it to some extent. Her mom had scarred her, and she didn’t want to let me in, afraid of letting me get too close in case I hurt her, too. Still, that in and of itself hurt me. She didn’t trust me. I gave her shelter and clothes and food, but that was basically all I was to her. In my mind, she was my daughter, but in her mind, there were times I was just a nag. For the most part, though, we got along.

It was only a month after she’d dropped out of high school that she got mixed up with a bad crowd, one that included Trenton Young. They had been on and off ever since, and even though I inwardly cheered each time they went off, they always ended up getting back together again. I guessed Trenton might’ve had someone else in between their stints, and I knew for certain Sage did. What she saw in Trenton that kept her going back to him I wasn’t sure.

It was only because they had been together for so long that I had his phone number. Not all of her boyfriends—she had a quite a few during her “off” times with Trenton—had she shared their number with me.

Having nothing to lose, I called Trenton next, but he didn’t answer his phone either. His voicemail greeting—Trenton here. Too busy to talk. Leave a message and I might get back to ya.—grated on me.

Wannabe tough guy. If he’s why Sage’s gone, if he’s done anything to her, he’ll learn the definition of tough from me. I swear to God.

My cell was almost dead. Great. I put my phone on the charger and was just beginning to pace in my crammed living room when my cell rang. Practically diving for it, I answered with a breathless, “Hello? Sage?”

“Vianna? It’s Corinne.”

“Corinne!” My voice sounded strained. I cleared my throat. “Have you heard from Sage?” My voice still sounded strained. Maybe it would until Sage was found. Blood rushed to my ears, and my heart pounded hard in my chest as I awaited her answer. Please let her have seen Sage or know where she is. Please!