All Chapters of For Better or Buisness: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

Nik stared at Eva feeling his throat tighten with pain as the words remained stuck in it. He had promised himself years ago that he would never beg anyone again to choose him since he watched his mother leave but it didn't matter. This was Eva, he would beg, even grovel at her feet. This was his Eva. "Please stay," he begged, letting her see through him. He didn't need to be on his knees now, they both knew how much it took to have Nik Stavros begging. Nik chose to be cut out from his family business and build his from scratch. She bent her head low, her waist-length brown hair that fell like a halo around her veiled her face. He didn't need to see her face, to hear her answer. It was a low whisper but he heard it loud and clear, "I'm sorry, Nik. I can't. I just can't." “Why can't you?” he yelled and pinched the bridge of his nose to get his emotions under control. From the corner of his eyes, he watched her toy with her fingers, and the diamond band on her right hand caught his

ELAINE I tossed in the sauteed shrimp into the melted butter and garlic paste and was met with the sizzling sound of it being cooked. I used my left arm to wipe off sweat that drizzled from my forehead into the corner of my eyes and I sighed in exhaustion. Even with the industrial sized fans and heat extractor in the kitchen, it was still hot as hell. "Elaine, I need those shrimps now." The head chef screamed from one corner of the bustling kitchen and I began to move it around making sure that it was thoroughly cooked on both sides. It's so easy to get overly stimulated in a restaurant kitchen, from the clashing pits and pan, to different people yelling orders, to the heat and sting of the fire, to the smell of different dishes both raw and cooked. It was almost always chaos. The sharp pain that shot through me from my lower back and waist had me abandoning the knife I had in hand to grip the edge of the kitchen table top. Fuck cramps and the never-ending cycle of pain and emot

ELAINEDo you ever feel like you can't escape the shadows? Like, no matter how fast you run, something is out to get you, and it will get you. Right now, the shadow felt like poverty. I had spent almost all my adult years scraping by since my mother got sick. At 21, I had cared for my mother while she slipped away when my father died. My parent had the kind of love story that felt too intense. Loving someone in ways that felt like when they left you couldn't live or breathe, and your entire axis was tilted upside down. Just when it felt like my mom was finally accepting my father's passing, she got sick with cancer. There is no sickness I hate more than this one. Like every other terminal illness, it was the sickness where you hoped against hope. During the times she was sick, we scraped and scraped, sold some of our properties to get her into some clinical trials, and even moved to New York when we heard a promising one was happening. My mom's passing made me an orphan with lot