CHAPTER 1: $4 Million in 30 Days

"Dad." Alura Wayne called out shakily as if she was dreading her father's response.

She stood in the cramped living room of their apartment, the walls peeling like dead skin, the single bulb dim as usual.

Across from her, was her father who slumped over the kitchen table like a finished man, he clutched an empty beer bottle. His hands shook so badly the glass shook slightly.

Robert Wayne didn't look up. His face was a mess of purple bruises. Fresh ones.

"Dad, what did you do?" She asked loudly this time, but he still didn't respond.

"Dad, I'm talking to you!"

"I'm sorry." The words leaked out of him like blood from a wound. "Alura, I'm so sorry."

She inhaled sharply. "How much?"

He hesitated.

"Dad. Tell me how much!"

He flinched, "Four...million dollars, it's four million dollars."

The number hit her like a fist to the stomach. Four million dollars. She made barely fifty thousand a year working three part-time jobs. Four million dollars was practically forty million to her.

" You said...." Her hands clenched tightly. "You said the money was for the new business. You said we were going to start over."

"Yes we would have! But then...then I thought." His voice broke. "Just one game. I could double it or triple it. Pay back the loan early and even have enough left over to really do it right."

Alura closed her eyes as tears slid down her cheek. She held her nose bridge with a shaky hand.

Of course. Of course it was gambling. Again. It was always gambling. Her mother had died when she was ten, and her father had spent the last fifteen years slowly destroying everything her mother left behind.

"They came this morning," Robert continued, his words slurring together. "Percy's men. They said thirty days to pay back. Thirty days or..."

"Or what?" She looked at him preparing herself for whatever ultimatum he was about to drop like a bomb.

He finally looked up. His eyes were red with tears and alcohol. "Or he'll take you in return."

Alura stumbled backwards, "What?"

Robert reached across the table with shaking fingers and pushed something toward her, It was a document with red stamps.

She slowly picked it up.

Her eyes scanned the first page. Then the second. Then back to the first because surely it had to be a mistake.

Marriage Contract.

Party A: Percy Miller, CEO of Miller Financial Services.

Party B: Alura Wayne.

"Y--you sold me, Dad." Her words came out trembling. "You sold me to pay your gambling debt!"

"I had no choice! They were going to kill me! Percy said if you married him, he'll forgive everything. The principal, the interest, all of it. He's been asking about you for years, Alura. He's always saying how beautiful you are, how you remind him of his first love."

Alura suddenly felt like throwing up. Percy Miller, the fifty-year-old man if he truly was. His greasy hair which was combed over his balding head and his small pig eyes that followed her every time she went with her father to beg for loans.

"He's been asking about me since I was nineteen, and you noticed but didn't say anything to warn him." Her voice shook.

"What could I say? I owed him money."

"You owed him two hundred thousand dollars back then! You could have stopped! You could have gotten help! But you kept going back, you kept borrowing, kept gambling it away, and now." She threw the contract at his face. The papers scattered across the table. "Now I'm the payment?"

Robert's jaw clenched, "The wedding is in thirty days. Everything's arranged. Percy already paid for the dress, the venue, everything. He's excited. He keeps calling me to ask about you, saying how he's going to take good care of you."

Something inside Alura cracked. It felt like a clean snap like a bone breaking.

"I am not marrying him, Dad."

"You have to!"

"I'm not marrying a man old enough to be my father because you can't stop gambling!"

"They'll kill me!" Robert jerked off the seat knocking the chair backward. "Don't you understand! These aren't normal creditors! Percy runs half the loan sharks in Cedarville! If you refuse, they'll kill me and then they'll come for you anyway! At least this way you'll be safe, you'll be taken care of."

"Taken care of?" Alura laughed bitterly. "He's going to rape me legally and you're calling it being taken care of?"

Her father's face crumpled. "Don't say that."

"Why? Because it's true? Because you know exactly what kind of man you're selling me to?"

"I had no choice."

"There's always a choice!" She was screaming now, months and years of exhaustion and rage pouring out. "You chose gambling over your daughter! Every single time! When Mom died, you chose alcohol and poker over helping me grieve! When I almost had to drop out of my first year at the university because we couldn't pay tuition, you chose the casino over my education! When I worked three jobs to keep us from starving, you chose--."

"Stop."

"You chose cards over everything! And now you're choosing to save your own pathetic life by giving me to a monster!"

"ALURA WAYNE!" Her father's hand slammed down on the table hard enough to make the beer bottle jump. "You will watch your tone! I'm still your father!"

"You stopped being my father the moment you signed that contract." She yelled back.

He froze.

The silence that followed was choking.

Robert's face went through several emotions. Shame, anger, more shame. Finally, he slumped back down defeatedly.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "Alura, I'm so sorry. But there's no other way. Percy won't negotiate. It's marriage or death. Please. Please just do this one thing."

Alura stared at the man who had raised her. The man who had taught her to ride a bicycle, who made her favorite pancakes on her birthdays, who cried at her mother's funeral and promised to take care of her forever.

That man was gone. Had been gone for years. This was just a shell wearing his face.

She picked up the contract copy from where it had fallen.

"Is this your solution?" She held it up. "This is how you save yourself?"

"Alura, please."

She ripped it in half.

Then in half again.

And again.

She threw the pieces in his face and walked to the door.

"Where are you going?"

Alura didn't answer. She grabbed her jacket, shoved her feet into her sneakers, and walked out into the hallway. Her father's voice followed her, pleading pathetically.

"Alura! Alura! Come back! We need to talk about this! You can't just leave!"

She took the stairs two at a time. Four floors down, until she was out of their building. The evening air hit her face coldly.

She started walking to no destination. Just away. Away from that apartment, that contract, that future.

The sky suddenly opened up without warning. It started raining heavily, the kind that soaked through clothes in seconds. Alura didn't stop instead she walked faster, then jogged, then ran. She ran past the convenience store where she worked, past the subway station where she handed out flyers on weekends, past the restaurant where she washed dishes until her hands cracked and bled.

She ran until her lungs burned and her legs shook and she couldn't tell rain from the tears on her face.

When she finally stopped, she was at Cedarville Temple.

The temple stood tall before her, with stone steps that led up to the main courtyard. She had been here before, months ago when things had been merely as bad as this. She had come to pray for her job interview. But the prayers didn't work. It seemed like God didn't listen.

But her legs gave out and collapsed right there in front of the steps.

"Please." She choked out. "Please, I'll do anything. Just not this. Anything but this."

She pressed her forehead against the wet stone and let herself break into more tears.

"Anything is a dangerous promise, child."

Alura's head snapped up.

An elderly woman stood three steps above her, perfectly dry in an elegant dress, standing beneath her umbrella. Staring at her with sharp eyes.