Chapter Two

I stared at the blinking cursor on my laptop until the white screen started to burn my eyes. To anyone walking past my office at the publishing house, I probably looked like a focused editor deep in a manuscript. But the truth was, I hadn’t read a single word in nearly an hour. My mind was stuck in a loop, replaying the moment, my life didn't just crumble,it exploded.

I reached down and touched the edge of the bottom drawer of my desk. I didn't need to open it to know what was inside. There was a thick envelope filled with "Final Notice" stamps and handwritten threats that hadn't come through the regular mail.

Most daughters inherit a house, some jewelry, or maybe just some warm memories when their father dies. I inherited a mountain of debt I didn’t even know existed until the day of his funeral.

The police called his death "suspicious." They used a lot of clinical, cold words to describe finding him in that damp alleyway. But once they realized who he’d been rubbing elbows with, the kind of people who don't use banks, they stopped calling altogether. They didn't want the headache of investigating the Silvers syndicate. But the Silvers didn't have any problem investigating me.

I remember the first time they showed up. It was a week after the funeral, right outside my apartment. Two men in suit told me that my father’s "business obligations" had passed down to me. They didn't care that I was a grieving daughter just trying to find my footing. They just saw a new source of income.

Since then, my life hasn't been mine. Every paycheck I earn is gone before it even hits my bank account. I’m a "rising star" in the industry, but I’m actually just a high-functioning ghost. I work twelve-hour daily not to build a career, but to stay alive for another thirty days.

But the debt isn't what kept me awake this night . It’s the faces of the two people I trusted most in this world.

Daniel and Sophie. My fiancé and my best friend.

I can still see them sitting on my velvet sofa the night after the funeral. Daniel had his arm around me, whispering that he would take care of everything. He told me he would "manage" my father’s old files and talk to the lawyers so I wouldn't have to deal with the stress. I looked at him through tear-blurred eyes and thought I was the luckiest woman alive to have a man so devoted.

And Sophie… She was right there, handing me tissues and tea, promising me that we would get through this together. She stayed over for a week, holding my hand while I sobbed myself to sleep. I thought they were my rocks. I thought they were the only things keeping me from drowning.

I didn't know then that Daniel wasn't trying to save me. 

The sight of my fiancé and my best friend in our bed,the bed where I had cried on their shoulders just months ago—didn't just break my heart. It shattered my entire reality. In that one second, every "I love you" from Daniel and every "I’m here for you" from Sophie turned into ash. They hadn't been mourning with me; they had been laughing at me. They were having an affair while I was mourning my father, using my grief as a cover to strip me of everything I had left.

I closed the laptop with a definitive snap. My father’s death might have been the start of this nightmare, but Daniel and Sophie’s betrayal is going to be the end of it. They think they’ve used me up, but they have no idea what a woman with nothing left to lose is capable of.

I’m going to find a way out of this debt. And then, I’m going to make sure that Daniel and Sophie pay back every single tear I shed on their shoulders. I’m going to make them feel the same suffocating weight they’ve forced on me.

The debt was mine to carry today, but I’m going to make sure they’re the ones who end up bankrupt by the time I’m through.