Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 30

I don’t really have many options. It’s not like I would ever have gone to any of my family members with this kind of stuff. Even before I learned that my husband and sister were running around behind my back, I wasn’t exactly confiding my deepest and darkest fears to either of them. They just didn’t know how to listen, how to help.

I’ve been on my own for a very long time.

But now that I’ve ruthlessly eviscerated them, I’m even more alone.

No calls are pinging my phone. My aunts have gone quiet in a way that tells me the group chat I’m not in is probably extremely active. There’s Skye, who charges by the tenth of an hour and strikes me more as a cold-blooded automaton than a friendly shoulder to lean on.

Which leaves Priya.

Except…

Tonight will be our little secret, Lilah.

Do I dare defy Kane? He warned me not to tell anyone about him, and I don’t even want to begin imagining what he’d do if I broke that command.

But he didn’t say I couldn’t talk about the situation. If I keep things vague, that should be fine, right?

One thing’s obvious: If I keep things inside my head, I’m liable to explode. I have to vent something or Priya will end up scrubbing little bits of me off the walls and ceilings when I inevitably erupt like Mount St. Helens.

“Hey, Pri.”

“Mm?”

“Can I ask you something dumb?”

“Those are the only kinds of questions you ever ask me!” she teases.

I lob a stale bread roll at her head. She ducks it, giggling, then turns around, props herself against the counter, and crosses her arms in the classic Priyanka Osborne way. It always makes me feel like I’ve been sent in for a scolding from the world’s kindest elementary school principal.

“I’m kidding,” she says, just in case I’d forgotten she’s the nicest person alive. “I’m always here for you, sweet cakes. Lay it on me. What’s up?”

I take a deep breath.

Okay. Here we go.

“There’s a… situation. With the building,” I say.

“What kind of situation?”

“Connor did… a thing.” I start to nervously peel at some flaking paint on the rim of the coffee cup. “He borrowed money. A lot of it. And he put up the bakery as collateral if he doesn’t pay it back.”

Priya’s arms come uncrossed and her jaw comes unhinged. “He used—Delilah. He put up this? The building? Your building?”

“I didn’t let him, just to be clear,” I hurry to clarify. “He forged my name to do it. I’ve got a lawyer and she says he can’t legally do what he did.”

Pri exhales and eases back. “Whew, okay. Well, that’s good. I mean, court’s no fun, but at least— Oh. Oh, no. I don’t like that look on your face at all, hon.”

I wince. “She also says proving it runs two hundred grand and takes a year, and I have neither.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my God.” She starts to crack her knuckles, one of her anxious habits. “When did you find this out?”

“Christmas Eve.” I hear how that sounds. “Well. Some of it came before that.”

“You’ve been sitting on this since Christmas Eve?”

“I’ve been sitting on a lot of things since Christmas Eve. It’s been a full week.”

“Okay, well, keep going, tell me everything! What happens now?”

This is where it gets tricky.

“The… lender… came to see me,” I say evasively.

She frowns, eyebrows coming together. “Like, someone from the bank?”

I shake my head. “Not a bank.”

“Then who?”

“It’s a—how do I say this?—a non-traditional lender.”

“Uh… okay…” Thankfully, she doesn’t pry further on that point quite yet. “I’ll spare you the inquisition for now. Go on.”

“He offered me an arrangement,” I say. “If I do what he wants for the next few months, he’ll forgo the collateral and the building will stay mine. If I don’t, he takes it on the 15th of January.”

The V in her eyebrows points more downward. “Well, what does he want?”

And there it is. The hardest part of this whole really hard conversation.

“I can’t tell you that.”

At that, Priya’s eyebrows fly straight up.

“I’m not being cute,” I add. “Part of it is I’m not allowed to say. That’s a condition. I’d tell you if I could.”

“Delilah.”

“I know.”

“De. Li. Lah. Girl. Woman. Lady. C’mon.”

“I know, Pri.” I set the cup down. My hands are dying for something to do, so I drag the bin of sanding sugar over and start setting up for cookies I don’t need to prep for another hour. “It’s a few months of a commitment and it ends at Easter. That’s the most I can give you.”

Pri watches me fiddle with things for a while, lips pursed. Then she asks:

“Is this person going to hurt you?”

I stop.

I did not expect that to be the question. I expected Is it illegal, or Have you lost your mind, or What would your father say?

But Priya has always had a gift for getting straight to the heart of things.

I think about it. It takes me a while, but in my defense, there’s a lot to sort through.

A coat settling over my shoulders. Heavy, warm, and fragrant.

The phone in his palm, extended in my direction. Be my guest. Call anyone you want.

Green eyes in the pantry. A huge shadow in the dark.

Do you think I don’t know what’s standing in front of me?

And then I think about the melted guts of my deadbolt in his glove, and the two men on my sidewalk with their backs to my window, and a shaking old man named Sasha bowing in a doorway, and a crowbar swinging at an exposed kneecap.

All of those things are the same man. I get that.

And yet…

“No,” I tell her softly. “No, I don’t think he is.”

Priya studies my face for a long moment. “Are you sure?”

“I think so.” I straighten the last jar. “Which probably makes me an i***t. But you asked, and that’s my final answer.”

“You’re not an i***t. You’re the least idiotic person I know, which is a big part of why I’m scared right now.” She pushes off the counter and comes down the table toward me. “Does he have kids?”

“What? No. Why would you—? I mean, I don’t think so.”

“I don’t know! I’m trying to picture him.” She flaps a hand. “What did your lawyer say about it?”

“I haven’t told my lawyer.”

“Why the hell not?”

“What’s the point of paying four hundred bucks for her to tell me something I already know?” I finally look at her. “Pri, I spent all night thinking it over. If I fight, even though I’m in the right, I’ll lose anyway, and I’ll be broke by the end of it. If I don’t fight, I lose on the 15th. If I take the arrangement, there’s a version of the story where I still own this place on Easter Sunday.”

“And what happens to you in that version, hm?” Her brown eyes are boring into me.

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I really don’t.”

The timer goes off. Priya doesn’t move for it, which for her is like a surgeon ignoring a heart monitor, so I go and get the croissants out myself and set the tray on the rack. When I return, she’s still standing in place with her arms folded again.

“How long do you have to decide?”

“Until midnight-ish. I assume.” I close the oven. “He didn’t actually give me a time. He just said one day.”

She’s got a look on her face I can’t read. Not judgment. I’m not even sure what I’d call it.

Then she says, “Sit down a second.”

“We should really get to work. I’ve got two hundred⁠—”

“Delilah Aileen Dorsey, sit your ass down right now.” She tugs out a stool and shoves me onto it. Then she pulls one out for herself, sits down, and puts her hands on my knees.

“Is this a come-to-Jesus moment?” I joke weakly.

She shakes her head, not taking the bait of the joke. “Even more serious. It’s a come-to-Priyanka-Osborne moment. Listen to me and listen close, okay? You are not everyone’s savior. You’re not their servant or their babysitter, not their keeper or their handmaiden. You were put on this earth to be happy, alright? So if someone out there, Connor or this ‘lender’ or whoever, thinks they can corner you into doing what they want, it’s not up to you to save the rest of us from them. We’ll be okay. I’ll be… I’ll be…”

Then, out of nowhere, she starts to cry.

I’m confused for a moment, but Pri has my whole heart, so I do the only thing that makes sense, which is to pull her into a hug. We both sink to the floor on our knees, clutching each other.

She’s racked with sobs that don’t quite make sense. “Pri, darling, what’s wrong?” I ask, touching her cheek. “What’s going on?”

“I was… I was going to tell you next week,” she chokes out through broken breaths.

“Tell me what?”

“Amari’s moving out.” She’s talking about her husband, the father of her daughter. “After the new year. We agreed on that so we didn’t do it in the middle of the holidays, in front of Zara.”