“I’m not interested in your comps! I want my money back with the interest we agreed on.”
“I swear to you, Frank. I’m so close.”
He examined me through his thick glasses, his jaw tight and cruel.
Sweat beaded on my brow, and I hoped he wouldn’t notice. I needed that money. And what Sasha said about Frank was true. If I couldn’t pay this back, Frank would put me in the hospital and go after my family for the cash. I squeezed the arms of my chair to keep from running out. I needed this money to make things right. To keep my family safe.
Frank reached in his desk drawer, and I flinched, half expecting him to come out with a gun. But no. Instead, he drew out a ledger book and began to flip through the pages. I held completely still for what felt like an hour. Finally, he slammed the book shut and lit a cigar.
“How much do you need?”
He knew. He just liked to make me to beg. “Fifteen thousand. That would bring our total to one twenty-five.” I’d padded the number in case the house decided to get moody again.
“At twenty-five percent, that comes to one sixty.”
“Well, more like one fifty-six and change—”
“I don’t deal with change. In this business, we round up.”
I swallowed and nodded my head. He was going to lend me the money. “Yeah, okay. One sixty. I can do that.”
“Not so fast, Mr. Cooper. We still have my cash flow situation to think about. You’re not the only person depending on me for financing, you know. And if I want to retain my loyal customers, I need to have the funds available when they need it.”
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but it didn’t sound good. “I understand.”
“Good!” He smiled in a way that gave me chills. “Then you’ll have no problem if we move the timeline up to July first.”
My mouth went dry. “But that only gives me three weeks to finish the house, find a buyer, and close the sale!”
“Three weeks and three days. Glad we could come to this compromise, Nicky. I’ll have the money to you in the morning. Now, if you don’t mind, I have other appointments today.” Looking up at the guard on the door, he said, “Get this asshole outta here.”
I stood in a daze and felt the hand of a guard on my arm, ready to steer me out. “Wait. What if I can’t pay you back or sell the house by the end of the month?”
Frank’s eyes hardened to steel. “My associates here would be happy to give you a demonstration.”
Too bad all the demo was done. I needed to hit something with a hammer. Instead I had to settle on finishing the edges of the wood floor with a hand sander and holding on to my anger tight enough that I didn’t gouge the hard wood. I couldn’t fucking believe the house had thrown a temper tantrum like a two-year-old and fried its own roof.
“It’s not like I want to leave, you know,” I said out loud. It could hear me even if it was hiding in on itself. “Believe it or not, I’ve come to really like you. Well, until that stunt you pulled with your roof. What were you thinking? Do you want to get all moldy? Nick is doing his best by you, and this is the thanks he gets?”
The house for its part felt chastened and remorseful. Not a lot of good that would do Nick now.
The rain let up soon after Nick left, so the leak in the attic tapered off. I soaked the water up with towels and set buckets out in case it started again. When he didn’t come back from the hardware store after an hour, I figured he was paying that creep Frank Diamond a visit. I hated that Nick was indebted to him, but I got it. He was just trying to get back into the work he loved, making old homes beautiful. Even if those homes could sometimes be ungrateful.
I sat back on my heels and gazed at the ceiling. “What do you think is going to happen here?” I asked the house. “You know I can’t stay. No matter how much I want to. I can’t afford to buy you from Nick, and he has to sell you or he’s gonna have some nasty guys after him.”
And I really did want to stay. It was hard for me to find places that made me feel completely comfortable. This place might be a tad moody, but only because it was afraid of being lonely again. I understood that. The time I’d spent on my own had been rough. People ignored the homeless, staring through them as if they didn’t exist. There had been days on end when I hadn’t spoken to another human at all. Since I’d met Nick, things had gotten better, but if I had to go back to live alone on the streets again, I might act out too.
“Nick will do right by you. I promise. I’ll make sure of it.”
The sound of footsteps on the stairs caught my attention, and Kelly popped her head in. Her face went from smiling to puzzled. “I thought I heard voices. Were you talking to someone?”
My face heated. I need to be more careful. Too many people had access to the house right now, and I didn’t want them to think I was a nutjob. I flashed her a sheepish grin. “Caught me singing to myself. I do that sometimes when I work alone.”
“Oh, yeah. I could see that. You could use some tunes. Want me to get the radio from downstairs?”
I hated the radio. For every decent song played, there would be five horrible ones. “Nah, I’m good. You looking for Nick?” I asked, changing the subject. “He went to the store. Not sure when he’ll be back.”
“Darn! I wanted his thoughts on this new job I’m working on.” Her bottom lip pushed out in frustration. I didn’t know why some girls did that fake-pouty thing. It wasn’t cute.
“Aren’t you still in school?”
“I graduated last week! I’m working for an interior design company now. It’s just entry level, but my boss asked me to put together some ideas on a new commission. I really want to impress him, so I’d like Nick’s opinion before I present it.”
“Wait, you don’t work for Nick anymore? You’re here all the time.”
“Not all the time.” She play-slapped my shoulder. “It didn’t feel right to bail just because my final grades were in, you know? Nick’s done a lot for me these last three years.”
I sat back on my heels and wiped my brow. “Three years? As an intern?”
“When I first started working for him, I was an actual employee. It was a part-time summer gig. I’d had the vague idea that I wanted to go to design school after finishing my undergrad degree in art, so I thought a few months at a small construction company would be a good place to start.”
“You went from employee to an unpaid intern? Don’t take this the wrong way, but isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?”
Kelly gave me a sad smile. “Last year, Nick let me go. I didn’t make much, but even so, he couldn’t afford my wages. He thought that was the end of me, but I talked to my advisor at school, she got it cleared for me to work here for class credit.”
“I can’t imagine working for a whole year unpaid.”
“For me, it was worth it. I live with my brother, so don’t have a lot of living expenses. And the job experience and the course credit are payment enough. When I started, I didn’t know anything at all, and Nick taught me way more about construction than I ever could’ve learned from a textbook. In fact, I started by doing some of the same tasks you are. He used to say interior design wasn’t only about picking pillow fabric. That if I wanted to make it in this industry, I needed to learn from the ground up. After all, how would I be able to truly work with carpenters and subcontractors if I didn’t have at least a basic knowledge of what they do? And the best way of doing that is hands-on. I think I’m the only person in my graduating class with first-hand experience installing a toilet.”
Huh. I glanced down at the sander in my hand. Look at me. I was refinishing hundred-year-old hardwood floors. Not something I ever expected to know how to do. And more importantly, I liked it. It beat teaching scales to a bunch of bored high school kids. I liked that feeling at the end of the day of looking over my work and seeing the results of my labor. I could rest easy, knowing I’d done something productive. That I’d contributed.
“What’s that face for?” Kelly
titled her head to study me.
“Nothing. Just thinking.”
“Okay, well, I’ll let you finish. Tell Nick to call me when he gets back.”
I nodded, turned on the sander, and for the first time in forever, I contemplated my future.
Aches and pains radiated though my entire body. The busted-up face and bruised ribs were bad enough, but I was too fucking old to be sleeping on the floor. I’d have to get Sasha an air mattress or something. If I could afford one anyway.
I peeled the lukewarm, gelatinous cold packs from my skin and tossed them in a pile beside me. When I got back to Sasha’s last night, he’d taken one look at my split lip and bloody nose and had turned all Mother Hen, running out to the drugstore and coming back with more first aid supplies than the Red Cross. It had felt good to let him fuss over me, and I’d let the pain relievers he’d forced on me lull me into a dreamless sleep.
I touched my sore side, assessing the damage. It definitely could’ve been worse. At least nothing was broke. Frank’s men knew how to get a point across without inflicting so much damage that I couldn’t work. Today wouldn’t be fun, but once I got some coffee in me, I should be able to handle it. I had no choice now. I had a house to finish in about half the time I needed to do it.
Fucking Frank! No, scratch that—fuck me. I was the dumbass who’d thought he could handle doing a deal with a loan shark and escape unscathed. I’d never seriously considered that this all might go tits up on me. My mind drifted to Marty with his arms in casts. Then, I pictured me in that hospital bed and my parents gathered around all worried. If they had to bail me out of this, they’d both have to come out of retirement and go back to work. No way was I going to let that happen.
Sasha mumbled something unintelligible and rolled to press against my side. He was warm and his chin hair tickled my collar. I ran my thumb along his jaw, caressed his ear, and twisted a curl around in my fingers. He was probably awake but refusing to open his eyes in a last stubborn attempt to cling to sleep.
I’d been so stupid to introduce him to Frank. It was one thing for his trained apes to come after me, but what if Sasha got caught up in the middle? Another person I needed to protect from the fallout if I failed.
I turned us so I was seated between his thighs. Only then did he open his eyes to smile up at me. I kissed him, slow and soft, careful with my sore lip, then chuckled when his beard hair stuck to my stubble like Velcro.
“Something else that never happened to me before meeting you.”
“It’s those two days of growth you’ve got going on.”
“You complaining?”
He rocked his hips so that his morning erection ran alongside my cock. “Does it feel like I’m complaining?”
My body was about to respond in kind when someone started pounding on the front door.
“Fuck me,” I groaned, rolling off him.
“Careful what you wish for,” Sasha said, yanking his jeans on, “I just might take you up on the offer.”
Barefoot, he headed down to see who would show up at our door at—I glanced at my phone—6:47 in the morning.
I yanked on my T-shirt from yesterday. It was splattered with rusty blood stains and dirt. I’d have to go home to shower and change before starting work on the roof. Downstairs, I heard Sasha removing the chain and unlocking the door.
“Morning, Steven.”
“Nick!” my brother bellowed. “You borrowed money from Frank fucking Diamond?!”
Shit. A dressing-down by my big bro was never fun, but before seven in the morning?
“I told you a million times, when you got ready to get back into the flipping business, I’d help you line up the financing. But no. You’d rather go to a loan shark than ask for help from your own family. You’re so goddamn stubborn!”
I came down and sat on the lower steps to pull my socks on. “Cool it, would ya? You’ll wake the neighbors.”
“Holy shit, what happened to you?” He grasped my chin and turned my face side to side to get a look.
I knocked his hand away. “Just a little bruised is all.”
“Did you report this to the police?”
“Report what? My illegal loan? First thing they would make me do is give the money back, and it’s already spent, or most of it is, anyway.”
“What about the assault?”
“Frank never raised a hand to me. What am I going to do, report his bodyguards? All that is going to do is piss him off. Besides, it looks worse than it is. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You can’t be. Because if you were, you wouldn’t have done something so profoundly stupid as take money from a loan shark with the ability to call in favors from every dirty fighter and criminal in the city.”
“How’d you find out anyway?”
“How’d I find out? I ran into that piece of shit Diamond at the UFC fight last night. He wanted me to pass on a little message for you.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“Just that July first falls on a Saturday this year, so you’ll need to have your closing done on the thirtieth in order to get your money to him on time. Doesn’t want you counting on having the weekend or anything.”
Steven peered around at the construction zone. We were making great progress, but no way could we have the house finished and sold by then.
“How much are you into him for?” Steven asked.
I didn’t want to answer, but what was the sense in hiding it at this point? “A buck sixty.”
“A hundred and sixty thousand dollars?” He enunciated each syllable like he was pounding nails in my coffin lid.
“Yeah. All in, including the twenty-five percent interest.”
Steven walked over to the window to stare daggers out onto the street.
Sasha sat down on the step next to me and folded my hand in his. Well, at least I had one person in my corner.
After a couple of very long minutes, Steven turned back to us. “If I had known about this before Tod left, I could have bailed you out. But now . . . Did I tell you he got a lawyer and froze most of my assets until we can get the condo sold and all of our stuff divided?”
I was torn between hurting for my brother and wanting to hunt Tod down to give him an ass whooping. “How could he do that? You weren’t married.”
“No, but we had joint accounts and owned the condo and a few investment properties together. Until we get the split worked out, I’m limited to whatever is in my checking account. It probably will only take a few months, but doesn’t sound like you have that much time.”
I hadn’t really given any conscious consideration to asking Steven to bail me out, but hearing that he couldn’t be my safety net even if I needed him made my stomach sink. He was the only person in my family who usually had access to that kind of cash. Damien might be able to scrape together a few thousand dollars, but that would be nowhere near enough to make a difference.
The world felt like it was shrinking in on me, and if I didn’t keep moving forward, I’d be trapped.
“Thanks anyway, bro,” I said, struggling to keep the defeat out of my tone. “I’ll work it out.”
“How? Where else are you going to come up with the cash by the end of the month? Even if you worked on this place twenty-four hours a day, you’d never get it sold by the end of the month.”
“I’ll get the money.”
“Where? You gonna rob a bank? Start turning tricks? I hate to break it to you, but your ass is too old to get much on the street.”
I leaped to my feet, clenching my fists. “I said, I’ll get it! I don’t need Saint Steven to ride in on his white horse and save me all the goddamn time. This is not your problem.”
“Oh yeah? It’ll be my problem when Mom and Dad are torn up over their son getting dragged out of Lake Michigan by his cement shoes. But fine. You want to handle it all by yourself? Have it your way.”
Steven slammed the door so hard that the glass in the window panes rattled.
The
house went deadly silent. I turned, half-expecting Sasha to be gone too, but there he sat on the third step, giving me a sad smile.
Fuck. What business did I have trying to start something real with him when I was up to my asshole in debt to a wannabe mobster? And then there was sweet Sasha, not criticizing, not offering me empty platitudes or telling me what to do. Just being supportive. I had to make this right for him. For myself. If we had any chance of building a life together, I’d have to get my head out of my ass and fix this.
Sweat rolled off me in waves, and I lifted the hem of my T-shirt to wipe my face. While Nick and some guys he’d hired took care of the roof, I’d spent the rest of the week sanding, prepping, and refinishing the hardwood floors. Not an easy job when over a hundred years of former occupants had worn in stains, drilled holes to run cables, and pounded in random nails, probably in an effort to fix squeaks. We’d wrapped up applying the second coat of finish, and I planned to spend the weekend at Nick’s place to allow the floors time to dry.
We were busting our ass to get the house done before Frank called in his loan. Damn, seeing Nick roughed up like that had scared the shit out of me. He talked tough about it, saying he’d been hurt worse in the ring during his fighting days, but I hadn’t missed the way he winced when he stood up or rubbed his shoulder when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. The first couple of days, he’d let me give him pain relievers, but by day three he’d told me to quit acting like a mother hen, he’d take care of himself. I’d taken his feistiness as a sign that he was feeling better.
Nick strolled into the kitchen from the backyard, where he was instructing a couple of high school kids which bushes he wanted torn out. They’d wandered over from across the street after their mother had gotten sick of them moping around the house. Nick, unable to turn down cheap labor, had been happy to give them a weekend project.
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