Tangled In The Deal

Chapter 1

“No! Please! Please, don't hurt me! I'm sorry for trying to run away. I promise to pay it off in full. Just please… keep that knife away from me!”

I sat up on my bed like The Undertaker often did in 90s WWE matches and stared at my clock. The red reminded me a little too painfully of the blood I had just tried to escape from in La La Land.

A cold wind sauntered into the room and ran up my spine, forcing me to wrap my blanket around my hunched shoulders.

“Great. Now I'm being haunted in my dreams. A girl can't even rest her troubled mind in her dreams.”

I picked up a hair band and tied my hair into a firm knot before walking down the stairs to get a drink from the refrigerator.

“I'm out of milk too? God, I can't keep up. I just can't. I…”

Choking back the tears that threatened to flood my line I vision, I reached out to the bottled water staring at me coolly, and took a huge gulp.

“Lily Harper, this is no time to throw yourself a pity party. We're going to save Agazag and save this house while we're at it.”

It's what Grandpa would have wanted.

“I need to find a way to pay off my debts and revive the library. It's the only thing I have left connecting me to my family and I'll be damned if I let those loan sharks take it away from me. I'm going to the Frayers at the first break of dawn. I am not losing this house!”

Walking back into my room, I noticed a shadow loitering around my front porch. You would think the universe understood your plight enough to not add unnecessary drama to the issues you were dealing with at the moment.

All the sleep jumped out of my eyes and I immediately went into hiding. I didn't need to check to know who the silhouette figures were. They had been following me everywhere in the past two months.

I once caught two of them watching me while I was having my Sunday brunch at the Motif Cafe and confronted them with a threat that I would have them reported only to get slapped in the face with a threat from their boss at the loan shark company I had borrowed from a few months ago.

Ever since my grandfather died, I had been left in charge of Agazag—the century-old library I had inherited as the only living descendant of the Harper family.

However, my deep-seated desire to save the library didn't stem from any filial sense of duty to protect my family's heritage. I simply wanted to keep the only connection I had left with the only people who had ever truly loved me.

Agazag had been passed down to my grandfather and he, to my parents. Sadly, I lost them to a car accident when I was fifteen.

“I wonder what Grandpa would say if he knew that I had goons stalking me because I did business with a loan shark company.”

I sighed as I bounded my way back up the stairs in my velvet night dress. I took a quick glance at the mirror and shuddered in fear of the reflection that stared back at me.

“What's done is done. I needed to stop the library from getting foreclosed by the bank and I was desperate enough to seek assistance from a loan shark.”

Do I regret my actions? Maybe. Would I do it again? Definitely.

“It's all I have left from Grandpa. I'm not going to lose it. Luckily I was able to keep them away for a few months by giving them the necklace Sarah gave me for my 21st birthday. It was made from pure gold but that wouldn't nearly be enough to hold them off for long.”

I need to find a way to pay off my debt completely and restore Agazag to its former glory.

I heard a car's engine revving down the driveway and knew the loan shark's goons were finally done with their ritual check to ensure that I was in fact still in the house and I hadn't run off with their money.

“I need to go visit Sarah as soon as the sun comes up. I need to come up with a strategy to raise some money. Fast.”

As I settled into the cold embrace of my twenty-year-old Rasheeda Crib as grandpa had oh-so-strangely named it and fumbled with my duvet before finally closing my eyes for a quick nap.

“I'm going to save Agazag and keep this house. I'm going to save Agazag and keep this house. I'm going to…”

“I want my mommy!!! I want to get out of here right now! Pleaseee.”

“Shut the f**k up right now or I'll give you a reason to you, stupid b***h!”

I was dizzy from malnutrition but I clearly saw the coffee-colored teeth barking orders at me like a rabid dog. The smell of tobacco choked my tiny lungs, making me beg for my mommy even harder.

“Mommy, where are you? Wher-”

A deafening slap. Then another. And another.

“I told you I was gonna shut you up if you didn't, you stupid cunt! Spoilt brat! You've never had to suffer to get anything, have you? Well, I'm going to make you suffer—I'm going to make you beg and grovel and kiss my decaying feet for a sip of water, you hear me?”

I tried to scream again but this time I'd lost my voice. At that moment, I had a shared understanding of how Ariel must have felt.

“Mommy! Mommy! Mom-”

I sat up with a start, but this time I was greeted by the symphony of birds and sweet hellos from the morning bloom scents of the gardenias, magnolias, and honeysuckles that camped around my windowsill.

“Oh, s**t! It's 11 am. I'm gonna be late for my meeting with Sarah!”