Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 30428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 152(@200wpm)___ 122(@250wpm)___ 101(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 30428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 152(@200wpm)___ 122(@250wpm)___ 101(@300wpm)
Whispers are beginning to come back to me. Etta Krop. I’ve heard her name around town, only spoken in hushed and fearful tones. At night, I work a shift cleaning commercial spaces and one of them is a lawyer’s office. One evening, as I was mopping the floor, something told me to remove one of my headphones and I overheard a phone call from one of the lawyers who’d stayed late. He was speaking to law enforcement about the lack of proof they’d been able to gather on a local crime syndicate. One that operates illegal gambling and drug operations that stretch across the entire state.
Now, I recall some of the words he used to describe this woman standing in front of me. Cold. Untouchable. Ruthless.
I’ve probably only guaranteed my own death. Me and my big mouth.
I can’t let anything happen to me, though. I’m all my siblings have in the world.
“You’re not someone I disrespect,” I say, tightly. “Got it.”
“Good.” She flashes a row of white teeth. “Now, if you’re ready to listen, I have a proposition for you. It could work out nicely for the both of us.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“You really don’t know when to shut up, do you?” Thankfully, Etta seems more amused by that observation than anything. “I find your…passion and bravery rather unique. You’ve obviously had a rough hand of cards dealt to you, but it’s only made your spirit stronger. As someone who had a similar upbringing, I admire that.”
“Cheerios!” bellows my youngest brother, shaking the rafters.
“I don’t even think we have Cheerios,” I say to Etta, uselessly. “I appreciate the compliments, but—”
“Against my better judgment, I’m going to offer you a way out of this.”
“A way out of what?”
“Oh, I didn’t mention?” She grins and paces forward a step, so I must tip my head back to keep eye contact. “If your father doesn’t pay me the one hundred thousand dollars he owes me, with interest, I’ll burn your motherfucking house down. With all of you inside of it.”
“Oh,” I breathe, winded, locking my knees straight so she won’t see them trembling. “And what was this way out you mentioned?”
“I don’t usually make house calls of this nature. I’m too important. I have someone who does it for me. His name is Koen.” She allows me to see some of her frustration. “He’s decided out of the blue to take some time off. But I need him back to work, you see. Now. He’s very…valuable to my operation. But I can’t seem to convince him to return. No amount of money or threats have done the trick.” She looks me over one more time and nods. “That’s your job. Get Koen back to work.”
“What? But I’m busy! And…how?”
“Figure it out. But complete the task without telling him I sent you,” she enunciates, taking a phone out of her suit pocket and tapping on the screen. “I’m texting you his private address. I wouldn’t waste any time. I’m giving you a week, Meg.”
“How do you have my phone number?”
“I know everything.” She takes a moment to impress that knowledge on me with an icy stare, then begins to back away toward the street. “Better call your Uber partner and let her know you won’t be there for your shift.”
My legs are jelly by the time Etta disappears into the back of a black Rolls-Royce at the end of my street. My phone vibrates in the waistband of my bike shorts, and I extricate it with numb fingers, staring down at the words on the screen, which are nothing more than an address. But it’s a nice address, a few towns over, right on the ocean.
“Cheerios! Cheerios!” everyone is chanting now, blissfully unaware that our fragile world could crumble around us if I don’t make this woman happy.
Good thing I don’t know how to fail.
2
Meg
All right, I just might fail.
Koen’s house is not only surrounded by gates, it’s perched on the edge of a jagged cliff, overlooking the turbulent ocean. I sit cross-legged down on the beach, staring up at the Batman-like home, wondering what this man did to earn the kind of cash one needs to buy a house this posh. Etta only told me he was valuable.
Valuable how?
That’s the least of my concerns. Right now, I can’t even figure out how to get into the house or what I’m going to say once I’m in front of this mysterious man. I’ve been set up to fail, but I can’t. I don’t doubt for a second that Etta will burn my house down and end the lives of my family members in the process. I don’t doubt it for a second. And then what am I going to do? My brothers and sisters will probably be absorbed by the state and distributed to foster homes, tearing our family apart.