Chapter 3:The Debpt

Rainwater sluiced down the collar of my jacket as I stepped out of Rosa's, the icy fingers of wind clawing at my exposed skin. The neon sign above Rosa's door buzzed erratically, casting a sickly pink glow across the wet pavement. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm wailed into the night, the sound swallowed by the relentless downpour.

"Don't go home. Not yet."

Rosa's warning coiled around my chest like barbed wire. I hesitated on the crumbling stoop, my fingers tightening around my phone until the plastic case groaned in protest. Where else could I go? The diner on 5th would be open, but Eve's people frequented it after hours. The bus station? Too obvious.

A shiver racked my body as I started down the sidewalk, my boots splashing through oily puddles that reflected the fractured city lights. The heels I'd worn to the club - cheap black pleather already peeling - rubbed angry blisters into my ankles. I should have changed at Rosa's. Should have done a lot of things differently tonight.

My phone vibrated against my thigh again.

Cara:Lucia, PLEASE answer. Adam isn't what you think.

I swallowed hard, tasting copper. My tongue must have been bleeding from how hard I'd been biting it. Cara meant well, but she didn't understand. She hadn't seen the way Adam's fingers had dug into my wrist when he'd finally recognized me tonight, his grip just shy of painful. She didn't know how Eve Lancaster's name slithered through Oakland's underworld - always spoken in hushed tones, always accompanied by the scent of expensive perfume and gun oil.

Headlights cut through the rain behind me. I ducked my chin, letting my damp hair curtain my face as a black sedan rolled past at funeral pace. The windows were tinted so dark they swallowed the streetlights whole. My pulse jackhammered against my ribs.

Breathe. Just breathe.

I counted the cracks in the sidewalk to steady myself. Seven steps later, the sedan turned the corner without slowing. Paranoia, then. For now.

Turning down 7th Street, the familiar glow of Mr. Chen's bodega should have been comforting. Instead, the flickering fluorescent sign made my stomach churn. The entire block seemed to pulse with erratic energy - streetlights buzzing like angry hornets, shadows stretching too long between buildings.

Halfway down the block, a figure emerged from an alleyway. I froze, my hand diving into my purse for the pepper spray Rosa had forced on me last Christmas. The man - just a kid, really, couldn't have been more than nineteen - gave me a wide berth, his hood pulled low against the rain.

"Sorry, miss," he mumbled, hurrying past.

The condo was only two blocks away now, but each step felt like wading through wet cement. The debt - Eve's debt, my father's debt, now somehow my debt - wrapped around my ankles with every shuffle forward, pulling me deeper into waters I couldn't navigate.

---

The key stuck in the lock, the way it always did when the humidity spiked. I jiggled it with trembling fingers, listening for the telltale creak of floorboards inside. Nothing.

Papa wasn't home.

The apartment exhaled stale air when I finally shouldered the door open, the scent of old takeout and lemon cleaner hanging heavy. I flipped the light switch, half-expecting to find Eve Lancaster perched on our secondhand sofa, those blood-red lips curved in a smile that never reached her eyes.

But the living room was empty.

Too empty.

His work jacket - the faded blue one with the torn pocket I kept meaning to mend - wasn't hanging on its usual hook. His keys weren't in the chipped ceramic bowl by the door. The ashtray on the counter held three fresh cigarette butts, the filter ends stained with something like Eve's signature plum-colored lipstick.

She'd been here.

Or worse - she'd taken him.

I paced the length of the living room, my damp dress clinging to my thighs, the cheap polyester suddenly suffocating. The wig I'd worn to the club - blonde, because Adam didn't know brunettes - hung half-off, the synthetic strands tangling around my neck like slender fingers.

The clock above the TV ticked too loud, each second a hammer strike against my skull. 1:17 AM. Where was he?

My phone buzzed again. Not Cara this time.

Unknown Number:Running only makes it worse, little Miss Lena.

The screen blurred as my vision tunneled. I could practically hear Eve's voice curling around the words, that honeyed tone she used right before twisting the knife.

Then - salvation or damnation, I wasn't sure which - the front door creaked open.

Papa stood frozen in the threshold, his work shirt rumpled and missing two buttons. A fresh bruise bloomed along his jawline, the purple-black stain standing out stark against his ashen skin. His eyes - Mama's eyes, the same warm brown I saw every morning in the mirror - locked onto mine, then dropped to the phone clutched in my white-knuckled grip.

"Lucia?" His voice was sandpaper rough, the way it got after long nights driving Eve's associates across the city. "What happened?"

I held up the screen, Adam's first text glowing between us like a live wire. "Tell me about the debt."

His face crumpled.

I didn't let him speak. "Tell me about Eve's deal."

The silence stretched taut between us, filled only by the drip-drip of rainwater from my hair onto the linoleum. Papa swayed on his feet, his fingers twitching toward the pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket before aborting the motion. When he finally spoke, the words landed like a gut punch:

"They want you to marry him."

The room tilted. I groped for the back of the armchair, my knees suddenly liquid.

Papa sank onto the couch, his work boots leaving damp prints on the carpet. The springs groaned under his weight as he scrubbed a hand over his face. "After Jordan died, Eve called the loan due. I couldn't pay. So she offered... an alternative."

My stomach twisted. "Me."

He didn't deny it. "I thought I could work it off. But the interest—"

"You sold me." The accusation tore from my throat, raw and bleeding.

"NO." He lunged forward, grabbing my hands with a grip so tight it hurt. "I refused. That's why I've been driving her, why she takes my paychecks. But Lucia..." His thumbs rubbed circles over my knuckles, a nervous habit leftover from my childhood nightmares. "She's losing patience."

The unspoken truth settled over us like a shroud.

Eve would come for me.

And Adam?

The cruelest part was that he didn't even know who I was. Not really. Not until tonight.

---

It came at 3 AM.

Three sharp raps - measured, deliberate, the kind of knock that wasn't really a request.

Papa and I locked eyes across the dim living room. Some unspoken understanding passed between us in that heartbeat before he moved, slow and deliberate, toward the baseball bat leaning by the door.

"Go," he whispered, jerking his chin toward the fire escape. "Out the back."

I didn't move. Couldn't move.

The knocking turned to pounding, each impact making the flimsy door shudder in its frame.

"Richard Pete." A man's voice, flat and impersonal. "Open up."

Papa's jaw clenched, the muscle jumping beneath his stubble. His fingers flexed around the bat's grip.

Then -

The door exploded inward.

Splinters rained down as two men in identical black suits stepped through the wreckage, their faces blank as storefront mannequins. The taller one had his hand inside his jacket, resting on what could only be a gun.

And behind them, sleek as a panther and twice as dangerous, stood Adam Lancaster.

Rainwater glistened in his dark hair, droplets tracing the sharp lines of his cheekbones before disappearing beneath his collar. His eyes - those impossible blue eyes that had haunted me for hours- locked onto mine with terrifying focus.

And for the first time, I saw it - the flicker of recognition. The dawning realization.

He knew.

One of the suits spoke, his voice devoid of inflection: "Eve Lancaster requests your presence."

Adam didn't take his eyes off me as he stepped forward, his Italian leather shoes crunching over the broken door. When he spoke, his voice was softer than I expected, almost apologetic:

"Both of you."