Breed Me On The Bike

HOW MUCH?

CORA

I stare at him.

I look at his face the way you look at a person you have known your whole life, waiting for the joke to land. It does not land. He is still my Dad, standing three feet away like he just told me to pick up milk on the way home. He is also the man who just told me not to run because it will be worse if I do, and I cannot make those two things sit in the same place.

He married my mom when I was seven. Vivian had already left him with Avery. He was not my blood, but nobody at school ever guessed that because he showed up to every conference and every game, and he signed every permission slip like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

After Mom died, Vivian came back with Avery, and he let them in. He gave them rooms. He put Avery’s name on the Christmas list next to mine. People used to say he favored me, and I used to laugh when they said it. I thought it was because I was the one who stayed with him for the longest.

Now I know what that favor was for.

“If you needed someone to pay a ransom you owed,” I say, “why didn’t you use Avery, Dad?”

His face changes into annoyance, like I tracked oil onto a clean floor.

“Why me?” I push. “Because I am not your biological child, right? You cannot trade your own daughter?”

“Watch it, Cora.”

“You f*****g sold me to Iron Dominion.” I say it out loud so it stops living only in my head. “Do you even realize what you have done? You sold me to a biker club.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“After everything I have been doing for you?” My throat is tight, and I hate that it is. “I have been helping you since I was ten. I was in here after school wiping counters and handing you sockets before I could even reach the top shelf without the stool. When Mom died, Avery and Vivian were not here. They left you. But I was. I started taking jobs at fifteen while I was still in school so this place would not go under. I missed sleep. I sat in that office and called vendors when you could not look at the invoices. And now I am the right person to sell?”

He sets my keys back on the counter like they suddenly weigh something.

“It is not about who helped,” he says.

“Then what is it about?”

“They wanted you.”

I laugh. It comes out sharp and ugly. “You are a liar.”

“I am not lying.”

“They wanted the stepdaughter.” I step closer even though my legs do not feel like they belong to me. “Not Avery. Me. That is convenient, Dad. That is real convenient for the man who still has a blood daughter sitting in my bridesmaid robe.”

His jaw flexes. “You think I offered you first?”

“I think you offered whoever they would take.”

“They asked for you.” His voice stays low, but it is harder now. “They did not ask for Avery. They asked for Cora Lang, untouched, nineteen, living in that house, engaged to the boy I put there. That was the only deal they would accept without taking the building and the lot and everything else I had left.”

“And you said yes to them?”

“I said what I had to say.”

I shake my head as I look at the soccer photo that is still taped to the register. Gap in my teeth. His hand on my shoulder. I used to look at that picture when I was having a bad day and think, at least I have him. I look at it now and my stomach turns.

“You told Miles he was good for me. You let me plan a wedding that was never going to happen so I would stay home and stay quiet and stay a virgin for a club I have never even seen.”

“Miles only kept his end.”

“Miles was in bed with your wife.”

“I already told you that is not the part that matters.”

“It matters to me.” My voice climbs, and I do not stop it. “It all matters to me. You used my whole life as a down payment and you want me to pack a bag like I am going to a sleepover.”

He rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. “You are making this louder than it needs to be.”

“Good.”

“Cora.”

“How much?” I ask.

He looks at me.

“How much do you owe them?” I say again. “Because I am not going to stand here and let you hand me to people I do not know. I work. I have a job. I take client calls all day and I bring home a check every two weeks. If this is money, then tell me the number and I will figure it out.”

“It is useless.”

“Tell me how much.” My voice is stern now.

“You work as a customer accounts at a firm that pays you just enough to cover your car insurance,” he says. “That check does not cover even quarter of this. You could work that desk for twenty years and you would still be short.”

I swallow. “Then how much?”

He does not answer.

I slap the counter, and the pen jumps. “How much, Dad?!”

He looks at the open bay, then back at me. For a second, I think he is going to send me to the back again. He does not. He just says it.

“Assets. Worth at least a million.”

The shop tilts.

I hear the radio. I hear the fridge. I hear my own breath like it is coming from somebody else.

“What?”

“A million,” he repeats. “That is what I took and what I could not put back.”

My head goes hot. “What did you do with a million dollars, Dad?”