INTEREST ON MY LIFE

CHAPTER ONE: INTEREST ON MY LIFE

“Uncle Vinnie ain’t a charity, Louis. The vig don’t sleep. You’re two weeks light.”

The voice was a low growl in the dark, right against his ear. Marco’s forearm pressed into Louis’s throat, pinning him to the damp brick wall of the alley behind his apartment.

Louis could smell cigarettes and cheap cologne, feel the cold seeping through his thin jacket.

“I have it… next Friday. I swear,” Louis choked out, the words scraping his throat raw. His thigh throbbed where Bruno had kicked him earlier…a deep, sickening ache that promised a brutal bruise by morning.

Marco leaned in, his breath hot and sour. “Next Friday? Money’s grown, kid. Your five grand is now seventy-five hundred. Interest…it’s a living thing. Feeds on your delays.”

He shoved Louis hard, sending him stumbling into a puddle of murky water. Louis hit the ground with a jolt, the impact rattling his teeth.

The contents of his grocery bag…a single packet of noodles and a bruised apple…spilled across the wet concrete.

“Not my problem,” Marco said, nudging the pathetic apple with the toe of his boot. “Next Friday, here or we pay a visit to that pretty little sister of yours at St. Jude’s. Heard the hospital food’s shit. Maybe we bring her somethin’ better.”

They left him there. The sound of their footsteps faded, swallowed by the city’s distant hum. Louis didn’t get up.

He lay curled on the cold ground, the rain beginning to mist down, mixing with the hot shameful tears that finally broke free.

Seven thousand five hundred. In seven days.

The number echoed in his skull, louder than his own heartbeat. An impossible mountain. He pulled at his hair, a raw, ugly sob tearing out of him.

It wasn’t just the money. It was the look on Chloe’s face last time he visited…trying so hard to be brave, her small body swallowed by the hospital bed.

It was the eviction notice hidden under a cereal box in his kitchen.

It was the feeling that he was drowning, and no one could even see the water.

“At this rate, I’ll be dead by thirty.”

The words were a hollow whisper in the fluorescent-bright silence of the office building. Third shift as a Janitor.

Louis pushed the mop across the linoleum, his body moving on autopilot while his mind spun in frantic, useless circles.

$7,500 for Vinnie. $42,871 for the student loans he’d taken out for a degree he never finished. $3,200 in back rent and Chloe’s bill…

The numbers were a swarm of wasps in his head, buzzing, stinging. He was so tired. The kind of tired that lived in your bones.

His eyes blurred. The heavy cleaning cart felt like it weighed a ton.

He didn’t see the frayed, exposed cord snaking from the floor buffer until the cart’s wheel hooked it.

Pop. Crackle-hiss.

A shower of blue-white sparks erupted from the wall. The power strip ripped free from the server room next door came a heavy thud, then the sound of dying electronics…a deep, groaning hum that faded into silence.

Louis’s blood ran cold. “Oh, no. No, no, no…”

Footsteps pounded down the hall. Keith, the night manager, rounded the corner, his face purpling with rage. “CARTER! What in the seven hells did you do?!”

“Keith, I’m sorry…it was an accident, the cord was just…”

“You just fried the entire third-floor network! You know what that costs? More than you’ll make in a lifetime!”

“Please,” Louis begged, the word sounding pathetic even to his own ears. “Just… one more chance. I need this job.”

Keith’s eyes were hard. “You’re done. Get your stuff. Security’s walking you out. Your final check will be mailed…if it even covers the damage.”

The walk to the bus stop at dawn was the longest of Louis’s life.

The world felt too bright, too loud. He was a ghost. Jobless. In seven days, he’d be broken.

He ducked into another alley, finally alone, and slammed his fist into the rough brick wall.

Once. Twice. The pain was a clean, sharp relief. He screamed, a raw, ragged sound that tore from his throat and vanished into the empty morning air.

He didn’t know how long he stood at the bus stop, just staring at nothing. A bright spot of color finally cut through the gray haze of his thoughts. A glossy flier, taped to the plexiglass shelter.

‘MAKE $500 IN AN HOUR!

Open casting call for fresh faces!

SPARKLECOLA National Ad Search!

No experience needed!’

Louis reached out, his fingers numb, and peeled the flier off the glass.

Just Five hundred dollars, It wasn’t seventy-five hundred but it was something.

A brick. Maybe if he found enough bricks, he could build a wall high enough to keep the world out for one more week.

“Cab!” His voice was hoarse. He waved down a beat-up yellow taxi with his last twenty-dollar bill.

The studio was chaos…bright lights, shouted directions, people milling around looking hopeful and desperate.

A woman with a headset, a tag “MIRA” stamped on her lanyard, was yelling.

“I need joy! Authentic, life-changing joy! Think you just found a winning lottery ticket in your old jeans!”

She threw her hands up. “Ugh, I don’t get paid enough for this.”

Then it was Louis’s turn. They shoved him under the hot lights. He blinked, blinded.

‘Think of joy, they said.’

All he could think of was Chloe’s smile before she got sick. The weight of his debt. The crushing certainty that he was failing everyone who needed him.

A smile tugged at his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It was a sad, fragile thing.

“Whoa.” Mira’s voice cut through his thoughts. She stepped closer, peering at him.

“Kid. Your eyes… what color even is that? Hazel? Gold? It’s like… sad autumn leaves.”

Louis just stood there, holding the smile that felt more like a wound.

“You look like you just lost a winning lottery ticket,” she murmured, fascinated. “It’s… weirdly compelling. Not for SparkleCola. But…”

She snapped her fingers. “Franco! Get the ‘Éclat Perdu’ bottle! We’re doing the melancholy test spot.”

She turned back to Louis. “Can you do that again? That smile that aches?”

“You… want me to look heartbreakingly in debt?” Louis asked, utterly confused.

“YES! That’s the vibe! ‘Éclat Perdu: For the Beauty of Longing.’ Just hold the bottle and… yearn. That’s all you gotta say. ‘For the beauty of longing.’ Now, don’t move.”

The camera whirred. Seven seconds. Louis held a stupidly expensive perfume bottle and thought about everything he couldn’t have. He said the line, his voice flat with exhaustion.

“And… cut! Perfect!” Mira beamed. An envelope was pressed into his hand.

Five crisp hundred-dollar bills. It was the easiest, strangest money he’d ever made.

As he turned to leave, a spark of desperate hope made him turn back. “Mira? If… if there are more slots like this. I’m… available.”

She looked him up and down, that professional glint in her eye. “With a face like that? Honey, we’ll call you. Franco, get his number!”

*****

Half a world away, in a skyscraper of glass and steel in Milan, Lorenzo Volterra was bored.

The board meeting droned on, a symphony of numbers and sycophants.

He tuned it out, his fingers swiping absently on his tablet.

He’d switched his VPN to the States, idly scrolling through local ad feeds…a strange habit he had. A window into other worlds.

A grainy, low-budget video auto-played.

Éclat Perdu.

And then the face.

A young man with hair the color of white-gold held a perfume bottle like it was the only anchor in a storm.

But it wasn't the hair that stopped Lorenzo's heart. It was the eyes. The color of amber held up to a dying fire.

But it wasn’t the bottle Lorenzo saw. It was the eyes. The color of amber held up to a dying fire and in them… a sorrow so profound, so familiar, it felt like a physical blow to Enzo’s chest.

He went utterly still. The CEO on the hologram screen was mid-sentence. Enzo raised a single finger.

Silence, immediate and absolute, fell over the marble-walled room.

He leaned forward, his own icy blue eyes widening. He rewound the clip. Seven seconds. He played it again…and again.

The young man’s lips formed the words “for the beauty of longing,” and Lorenzo felt something long frozen inside him crack.

‘There.

That is the one. The emptiness in his smile… it matches the emptiness in this room. In me. He is beautiful. He is… mine.’

He didn’t look away from the screen as he spoke, his voice low and sharp in Italian. “Anya.”

His assistant was at his side in an instant. “Sir?”

“Find that company. Buy it. I want every frame of footage they have of this man. I want his name. His address. His blood type. I want to know what makes his eyes look like that. You have one hour for the company. Five for the man.”

“The board meeting, sir?” Anya asked, her voice perfectly neutral.

Lorenzo finally tore his gaze from those haunting eyes on the screen. “Tell them I have acquired a new priority asset. The meeting is terminated.”

He didn’t see the stunned faces of the board members.

He only saw the dossier that appeared on his tablet less than five hours later, as his private jet cut through the clouds over the Atlantic.

LOUIS CARTER. 24.

Address. Debts…a staggering, pathetic list. Sister: Chloe Carter. Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Prognosis: Guarded.

Lorenzo traced the photo on the screen with his thumb.

A possessive heat settled in his veins. He wasn’t just going to find this man. He was going to erase the sorrow from those beautiful eyes. He was going to own it.

*****

Back in his apartment, Louis lined up his money on the rickety table. Five hundred from the ad.

Eighty dollars in tips and change. It looked so small and stupid. A sob built in his throat, but he was too tired to even cry.

Maybe Mexico, he thought wildly. Just run.

A knock at the door. Not the lazy, threatening pound of Marco and Bruno. This was quite different. Three sharp, precise raps, very authoritative and final.

Louis’s heart hammered against his ribs. ‘They’re early. Oh god, they found out I got fired, they’re early.’

He crept to the door, fear a sour taste in his mouth, and peered through the peephole.

A man stood there. He was… beautiful, in a sharp, cold way. Hair dark like ink, eyes a piercing blue.

He wore a wool coat that screamed money. Behind him stood two mountains in suits and a severe woman holding a tablet.

These weren’t loan sharks. They were something else entirely.

Trembling, Louis cracked the door open, the chain still latched. “Yeah? Who are you?”

The man…looked at him. Up close, Louis could see the intensity in his gaze, a hunger that was almost frightening.

He looked at Louis like he was a masterpiece, a lost treasure, a puzzle he’d already solved.

His voice, when he spoke, was deep, accented, and utterly certain. Each word was a stone dropped into the silence of Louis’s hallway.

“You are…my husband now.”His English, rehearsed on the jet, comes out thick, grammatically scrambled, and utterly sincere.

Louis stared. He actually blinked, sure he was hallucinating from stress. “…What?”

The man didn't seem to notice his confusion. He looked immensely satisfied, as if he'd just announced the sky was blue. "I see you. On television. For the…"

He paused, his brow furrowing slightly. He made a small, elegant spraying motion near his neck. "The smell. Good smell."

A hysterical laugh bubbled out of Louis. It sounded unhinged even to him.

“Okay. Wow. You guys are… really committed. Is this a new cult? Because I gotta tell you, my credit score makes me a terrible prophet and I’m not an actor, so whatever this is, I’m not…”

“Not actor,” Lorenzo interrupted, his voice dropping, softening in a way that was somehow more dangerous.

He leaned closer, his gaze locking onto Louis’s, refusing to let him look away. “Husband.”

A slow, deliberate smile touched Lorenzo’s lips…not warm, but possessive. Triumphant.

“I am Lorenzo Volterra, and ,” he said, the words a vow, “you…my most valued obligation.”

He touched his temple. "Here. I know you. Now, I am here."

He gestured to the space between them, then made a sweeping motion that seemed to encompass Louis, the shabby apartment, his whole life.

"I fix. I have…money. The sick sister. The… fear." His blue eyes burned with a terrifying certainty. "All gone. For you."

He took a half-step forward, the chain on the door the only thing separating them. His gaze was possessive, awestruck, and utterly final.

"You are my most… important thing now."