Chapter 4: The Girl Who Didn't Flinch
The gunshot echoed through my office.
I didn't even look up from my paperwork. Behind me, through the window, a bird had just slammed into the glass and fallen fifteen stories to its death.
"Boss, you okay?" Vincent burst through the door, gun drawn.
"It was a bird." I kept reading the contract in front of me. "Relax."
Vincent lowered his weapon but didn't leave. "You've been in here for six hours. Romano's waiting to give you the weekly reports."
"Send him in."
Vincent left, and a moment later, Romano shuffled in carrying his tablet and a folder thick with papers. He was sixty years old, starting to go gray, but his mind was still sharp as a knife.
"You look tired," I said.
"I am tired. Do you know how many people owe you money?" He dropped into the chair across from my desk. "Two hundred and thirty-seven active loans. Thirty-two new ones this week alone."
"Business is good."
"Business is exhausting." He opened his tablet and started scrolling. "Most people are paying on time. We've got the usual excuses—car broke down, kid got sick, dog ate the money."
"Dog ate the money?"
"I'm paraphrasing. But you get the idea." He scrolled some more. "We've got three people who missed payments this month. Vincent already handled two of them. The third one is in the hospital after a car accident, so we're giving him extra time."
I nodded. I wasn't a monster. Sometimes life got in the way. As long as people communicated, we could work things out.
"What about the new loans?" I asked.
Romano pulled out the folder. "Here are the files. Most of them are standard—small businesses needing cash, people with gambling debts, the usual stuff."
He spread papers across my desk. Names, numbers, addresses. Each one represented someone desperate enough to come to me.
I scanned through them quickly, not really paying attention. Then one name jumped out at me.
Lucia Santos.
"Wait." I pulled that file closer. "This is the girl from yesterday."
"Yeah. Nineteen years old. Mother has cancer. Borrowed forty thousand for medical bills." Romano leaned back. "I still think she's a bad risk, but you wanted to meet her yourself."
I opened the file and started reading. Lucia Santos. Born in this city. Graduated high school last year with good grades. Had been accepted to college but never enrolled. Started working full-time when her mother got sick.
Three jobs. One at a diner, one at a grocery store, one cleaning office buildings at night.
She was working herself to death.
"How much does she make?" I asked.
"About two thousand a month, total. Maybe a bit more with tips."
"And she owes me how much?"
"Fifty-two thousand with interest. First payment is eight thousand six hundred sixty-six dollars, due in thirty days."
I did the math in my head. She'd need to work for four months just to make one payment, and that was if she didn't spend a single dollar on food or rent or anything else.
She couldn't pay this back. Not in six months. Not in six years.
She must have known that when she signed the papers.
So why did she do it?
"What did you think of her?" Romano asked. "When you met her yesterday."
I thought about it. Thought about how she'd looked sitting in that chair, terrified but trying to hide it. How she'd cried when she talked about her mother. How desperate she'd been.
But there was something else. Something I couldn't quite name.
"She didn't flinch," I said finally.
"What?"
"When I told her what would happen if she missed payments. When I explained the terms. Most people flinch. They look away or start shaking or try to negotiate." I tapped the folder. "She just stared at me and said okay. Like she'd already accepted whatever was coming."
"Maybe she's stupid."
"She's not stupid. Her grades prove that." I kept staring at her file. At the photo clipped to the front—probably from her driver's license. She looked younger in it. Happier. Before the world crushed her.
Romano watched me carefully. "You're thinking about something."
"I'm thinking she's going to default on this loan."
"Probably. So what do we do when she does?"
That was the question, wasn't it? What did I do with Lucia Santos when she couldn't pay?
Usually, it was simple. People who couldn't pay with money paid other ways. They worked for me. Ran errands. Carried packages. Did jobs they didn't ask questions about.
But something told me Lucia Santos wasn't cut out for that life.
"Let's wait and see," I said. "Maybe she'll surprise us."
Romano snorted. "In thirty years, I've never seen anyone making two thousand a month pay back a fifty-thousand-dollar loan in six months. But sure, let's wait and see."
He gathered up the other files and stood to leave. At the door, he paused.
"You know what's weird?" he said.
"What?"
"Maria Gonzalez—the woman who vouched for this girl—she's never asked us for anything. Never asked for more time, never complained about the interest rate, never tried to negotiate. She just pays what she owes every month, right on time."
"So?"
"So she knows exactly what kind of man you are. What kind of business this is. And she still sent her young coworker to you." Romano shook his head. "Either she really trusts this girl, or she's setting her up for something. Can't figure out which."
After he left, I sat alone in my office, staring at Lucia's file.
Maria vouching for her meant something. Maria was smart, careful. She wouldn't risk her own good standing by recommending someone unreliable.
Which meant Lucia Santos was probably exactly what she appeared to be: a desperate girl trying to save her mother.
A girl who was going to fail.
A girl who would end up owing me more than money.
I should feel nothing about this. It was just business. I'd seen a thousand desperate people, and most of them ended up drowning in their debts.
But I kept thinking about how she'd looked at me. Those eyes full of terror and determination and something else. Something that looked almost like courage.
My phone rang. Vincent.
"Yeah?"
"Boss, we've got a problem. The Rossis just hit one of our shipments at the docks. Took everything."
I was on my feet immediately, Lucia's file forgotten. "How many men did we lose?"
"Three dead. Two injured."
"I'm on my way."
I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door. This was what mattered. This was my real life. Territory wars and shipments and staying one step ahead of people who wanted me dead.
Not some nineteen-year-old girl with medical bills.
But as I rode the elevator down to the parking garage, I couldn't shake the image of her face from my mind.
And I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd just made a terrible mistake.
Not in giving her the money.
But in thinking I could stay uninvolved.
Because something told me Lucia Santos was going to become a much bigger problem than I'd anticipated.
I just didn't know why yet.
My phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number: *Thank you for helping me save my mother. I won't let you down. I promise I'll pay back every penny. - Lucia Santos*
I stared at the message.
Nobody had ever thanked me before.
Nobody had ever made me a promise like that.
And nobody had ever been stupid enough to give me their personal phone number unless I asked for it.
I should ignore the text. Delete it. Focus on the Rossi problem.
Instead, I found myself typing back: *Don't make promises you can't keep.*
I hit send before I could stop myself.
Three dots appeared immediately. She was typing.
My heart did something strange in my chest. Something I hadn't felt in years.
Anticipation.
Her response came through: *I always keep my promises. Even when it's hard.*
I smiled. Actually smiled.
This girl had no idea what she was getting into.
And somehow, that made everything much more interesting.