All Chapters of The Debt Collector's Price: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

ISLA'S POV7 AM on a Sunday morning feels different when you’re standing in a hallway with fourteen dollars and twenty-seven cents to your name.I grip the key card, the plastic edge digging into my thumb. My bank account balance is burned into my retinas—$14.27 left after paying for a hotel room I definitely couldn’t afford but desperately needed just to cry in private.I could run. I could turn around, take the elevator down, and disappear into the city. Start over somewhere Gabriel Hunt’s money can’t reach.Except Mom’s medical facility bill is sixteen thousand dollars a month. It’s due in three days.And I have fourteen dollars.I slide the key card into the slot. The light blinks green, a cheerful little mechanical permission. The lock clicks.I push the door open. Prison or sanctuary. I can’t tell the difference anymore.He’s waiting in the living room.Gabriel is still wearing yesterday’s clothes. His white shirt is rumpled, the sleeves rolled up to expose forearms tensed with

ISLA'S POVMarcus Hale is still watching as we exit Per Se.That slow smile. That raised glass. A silent, predatory acknowledgment of the show I just put on. He knows I lied. He knows I pulled Gabriel back from the edge of the cliff, and he knows exactly what it cost me to do it.Gabriel’s hand tightens on the small of my back, guiding me through the tables like he’s steering a ship through a minefield."Don't look at him," he murmurs, his voice low and tight."Too late."The valet brings the car. Gabriel opens the door, and the moment I slide onto the leather, the privacy screen rises with a soft, mechanical hum. It seals us in the backseat, cutting off the driver, the street, and the rest of the world.Manhattan slides past the tinted windows in streaks of blurred light.The silence in the car is heavy, pressurized.Gabriel breaks it first."Thank you."The words are quiet. Heavy. Like he’s been holding them in his mouth since we left the Castellanos’ table.I don’t look at him. I k

ISLA'S POVThe invitation arrives by courier.It’s printed on cream cardstock so heavy it feels more like a weapon than paper. The embossed letterhead catches the light: Whitmore & Associates.Ms. Bennett - Mr. Marcus Hale requests a meeting to discuss matters of mutual interest regarding Morrison Construction. Wednesday, 2 PM. No recording devices.I stare at the paper. I should delete the digital invite. I should throw this card into the trash. I should tell Gabriel immediately.Instead, I book the appointment.Whitmore & Associates occupies three floors in Rockefeller Center.It is all marble and mahogany, the kind of law firm that charges two thousand dollars an hour and wins every time. The air smells of lemon polish and billable hours.The receptionist is expecting me. She looks at my off-the-rack suit with a glance that prices it to the penny. "Ms. Bennett. Conference room C. Mr. Hale is waiting."She leads me down a hallway lined with oil paintings of dead white men in judicia

ISLA'S POVThe car ride is silent.Not the comfortable silence of people who know each other, but the hostile silence of people who wish they didn't.Gabriel sits across from me in the leather backseat, his hands folded, his face expressionless. He hasn't said a word since I opened the hotel room door. He just handed me my coat, waited while I packed my laptop, and followed me to the car his security team had waiting downstairs.The humiliation of being tracked, found, and retrieved like a runaway teenager burns under my skin.I stare out the window as Manhattan slides past. It’s late enough that traffic is thin. The city that never sleeps is watching two people trapped in a contract that won't let them wake up.The penthouse elevator takes us up forty-two floors of silence.When we enter, he doesn't retreat to his office or his bedroom. He just stands in the living room, waiting."I need to show you something."His voice is rough, tired—the sound of a man who's been explaining himsel

ISLA'S POVThe panic hits in waves, a physical tide rising in my throat.First wave: four hundred thousand dollars. A number so large it stops looking like money and starts looking like gravity.Second wave: Mom’s medical care. Sixteen thousand dollars a month. The machinery, the nurses, the drugs keeping the MS at bay—all of it ending the second the acquisition is voided.Third wave: Forty-eight hours. Two days to prove my father’s debt was real or lose the only life raft we have left.My legs give out. I sit down hard on the cold marble of the kitchen floor. I just sit there. I can’t stand up. The physics of standing require an energy I no longer possess.Gabriel is already moving. He’s shedding the exhausted vulnerability from five minutes ago, shifting back into the machine I recognize from board meetings. He grabs his laptop, his phone, pulling files from the air."Elena, I need the full legal team assembled within the hour. Conference room. Every document from Morrison Construct