THE MIDNIGHT CONTRACT

CHAPTER 5 - MIDNIGHT

Tessy POV

The hospital called at 9 p.m. and told me, in the gentlest voice I've ever hated, that my brother had until midnight to live. Or at least, until midnight to have a chance at living.

"I need you to confirm payment is coming," the woman on the phone said.

"Otherwise the transplant team has to release the organ back to allocation."

"It's coming," I said, and hated myself for saying it, because I had no idea if that was true.

I hung up and looked at the clock on the stove. Three hours. I said it out loud once, just to hear how little time it actually sounded like when it wasn't a number on a screen anymore.

The bank said no before I'd even finished the sentence. The loan officer, a man named Greg whom I'd never met and would never meet, laughed before he caught himself, then apologized and told me nothing moved that fast, not for anyone, rules were rules. I thanked him anyway, out of some reflex, I couldn't turn off even with my brother's life on a clock, and sat there afterward with the dial tone in my ear longer than I needed to, because hanging up felt like admitting the call had actually happened.

Manny picked up on the second ring. He heard three sentences and went quiet in a way that told me everything before he said it out loud. He loved Nathan like his own, but he was tapped out, he'd already given us everything he had to give two years ago. I told him it was fine, it wasn't his fault, and hung up before either of us could hear the other one cry.

My hand was shaking by the time I set the phone down on the counter. I hadn't noticed it starting.

"Fourteen percent, biweekly, if you qualify." The payday lender's voice was bored, reciting numbers he'd said a thousand times to a thousand people exactly like me.

Even if I qualified, even if they could move that fast, which they couldn't, not by midnight, it would take me a decade to climb back out. I wrote the number down anyway, on the same pad my mother had used the night before, because some part of me still needed to see it fail on paper before I'd believe it.

My mother came into my room while I was still holding the phone, staring at nothing.

She set something small on the table between us.

Her wedding ring. My father's ring, technically, the one he'd saved two years to afford, the one she'd worn every single day since he put it on her finger. I stared at it sitting there on the wood, small and bright under the kitchen light, and for a second I couldn't make myself look up at her face, because I already knew what I'd see there.

"Sell it," she said.

"Mom, no."

"Sell it, Tessy. Tonight. There has to be a pawn shop still open, there has to be someone—"

"It's not enough," my voice cracked wide open, saying. "Even if we sold it tonight, right now, for whatever anyone would give us for it, it's not enough. Not even close."

She looked at the ring like she hadn't let herself think that far ahead. Her hand hovered over it, not quite touching, like she was already saying goodbye to it and hadn't managed to yet.

"Then what do we do," she said.

I didn't answer her, because the only answer left standing was one I didn't want to say out loud yet, not even to myself.

At 11:40, I was standing outside Northstar Tower again, the same marble, the same revolving door, except this time the lobby was empty and dark except for the strip of light behind the front desk.

The same security guard from that morning was posted near the elevators. He straightened when he saw me coming, and I braced for him to stop me the way he had hours earlier.

He didn't.

"Mr Damon's expecting you," he said.

"Top floor. Elevator's already been called."

I didn't ask how. There wasn't time.

The elevator rose in silence, my own reflection staring back at me in the brushed steel doors, hair falling out of its clip, coat still buttoned wrong from when I'd thrown it on at home. I didn't fix it. There wasn't a version of tonight where how I looked mattered anymore.

Somewhere below the floor, numbers ticking upward, my phone sat heavy in my coat pocket, the screen dark, my mother's face still the last thing I'd looked at before I made myself walk out the door.

The doors opened onto a hallway lit low, glass offices dark on either side, one light burning at the very end.

I walked toward it because there was nothing left behind me to walk back to.

At 11:52, I pushed open the door.

Thiago sat behind his desk exactly the way he had that morning, jacket off now, sleeves rolled to the forearm, a single lamp throwing light across a contract already sitting square in the middle of the desk.

He didn't look up right away.

I stood in the doorway, chest heaving from the elevator ride for the last four hours or both, waiting for him to say something, anything, and he let me wait, let the silence stretch long enough that I almost turned around and left.

Then he lifted his head.

"I was starting to think," he said, "you'd let your brother die out of pride."

The clock on the wall behind him read eight minutes to midnight.

He slid the contract across the desk toward me, the paper catching the lamplight, and set a pen on top of it without a word.

"Sign it," he said.

"Or walk out and watch him die knowing you had a choice.”