CHAPTER 1
Pay the Debt or Marry the Man
Aunt Diana tossed a big envelope over the kitchen table and said, "You have two options." "Make the payment by Friday, or get married to him."
I lost control of the fork.
The crack it made as it struck the dish was too loud in the tiny kitchen. I waited for my aunt to show me that this was not genuine by smiling, waving her hand, or doing something else. She didn't smile. She folded her hands over the envelope and gave me a dry-eyed look that I had only ever seen at my father's grave, where she had to be the one to remain upright.
"Marry who?" I asked in an odd voice. thin.
"Alexander Kane."
The name stayed like a solid in the space between us. Kane, Alexander. The person who creates magazine covers and signs. The man whose company was associated with wealth, power, and things that had no place in a kitchen in Queens
"His lawyers contacted me six weeks ago," she said. "He will pay off the entire debt. A year of marriage. You're free after that, and we keep everything."
For six weeks. As I stood, my chair scraped the floor. I was unable to endure this.
"Six weeks and you are telling me now."
"I kept looking for another way." There was a small crack in her voice. Just enough to let me know how much the past six weeks had cost her. "There was no other way, Soso."
I moved over to the window. The street outside continued as usual, with two boys riding bikes, a woman pushing a stroller and music coming from a floor above us. Everything is typical. Everything was totally unaffected by the fact that my life was ending and beginning again in our kitchen at the same time.
Before he passed away, my father had been ill for two years. I was aware of some of the debt, which was his. Not everything. In the same way that you shield someone from a wound that is too big to see directly, my aunt had shielded me from the entire number.
"How much?" I asked without looking back.
She told me.
My hand was flat against the window glass. It feels cold in my palm. In this kitchen, in our lives, and in every world I had ever been a part of, the number was unattainable. However, it was real. It had always been real. Simply put, I hadn't been permitted to know."Have you signed it yet?
Silence for one second. Too long by one second.
Yes, on behalf of the family," she replied. "We still need your signature. The contract is void without it.
I turned. Smaller than I had ever seen her, she remained seated at the table, and I considered everything that she had contributed without being asked. Her entire life revolved around me. I couldn't be upset with her. I was incapable of doing it.
I took a seat again. I took out the envelope. My father had insisted that I read every word of every document three times, no less, and by the time I got to the last page, my name was already written there. SOPHIA ANN REED. Waiting
A year. That was all. After a year, my aunt could breathe, the house was secure, and the debt had been paid off.
I grabbed the pen.
"Soso "
"Let me do it," I said. "Please."
I put my signature.
My handwriting. My name. That was not a choice I made.
Before I could say anything more, Aunt Diana came across the kitchen and grabbed me. Tight, like the night my father passed away, as if she was attempting to keep something together that was already beginning to fall apart. I put my face on her shoulder, took a deep breath, and
waited thirty seconds. After saying good night, I took a step back and headed to my room.
I needed to see the face of the man I had just decided to marry, so I opened my laptop while sitting on my bed in the dark and looked up his name.
Kane, Alexander. CEO, thirty years old, ruthless. private. Green eyes in quiet, crisp photos that seemed to capture little. One photo at a gala two years ago caught my attention. Everyone in his vicinity was laughing. He was standing a little apart, staring off into space, and displaying the particular look of someone who no longer expects to be reached.
That face was familiar to me. I had been wearing it for the past two years.
I closed the laptop. Lay back. I tried to settle.
My phone buzzed.
The number is unknown. Just one message.
Ask him why his company purchased your family's debt six weeks ago before you enter that penthouse. Find out from him if any of this happened by accident.
My chest tightened. In response, I typed: Who are you?
Three dots. Then they came to a halt. Then there was one last message.
"Someone who knows what he did to your father."
The screen ran out of time.
The room darkened.
And while I lay there in the silence, the words burned in my chest, becoming louder with each repetition:
How did he hurt my dad?
I didn't sleep.
I let the question run on its own while lying on my back and looking at the dark ceiling. How did he harm my dad? How did he harm my dad? Every few minutes, I flipped it over and looked at it from various angles, trying to find the one that made it less logical. I was unable to identify one.
My dad had been careful. organised. He kept up files on everything, including letters, bank data, and records going back many years. My aunt and I had packed his belongings into boxes and placed them in the storage unit three blocks away from the apartment when he passed away. I had not opened them since doing so would have required me to revisit a version of myself that I was still not ready to completely embrace.
However, those boxes might hold the solution. I rolled onto my side and looked at the wall rather than the ceiling. The storage space. The cartons. Packing, getting ready for a driver I hadn't invited, and preparing for a life I hadn't chosen were all part of tomorrow's busy schedule. Tomorrow, I have no time for the storage unit.
However, I have time now. I looked up the time. It was 1:47 in the morning. When I first rented the unit, I made sure the storage facility was available around-the-clock since I knew that sadness did not maintain business hours.
I got up. Put clothes on. Silently, I went past my aunt's door, down the stairs, and out into the darkness. Queens at two in the morning was not empty the way other places were empty. It was just quieter. Different. The same streets, wearing different clothes. I walked the three blocks with my hands in my pockets, and my heart going faster than the pace warranted and let myself think about my father without the guard I usually kept up.
He had been a good man. Not perfect, he had been stubborn and occasionally oblivious, and he had burned toast every single time without ever learning from it, but good in the ways that counted. Honest. Principled. The kind of person who saw something wrong and could not leave it alone.
That quality had probably gotten him into whatever this was.
At the back were his boxes. My aunt's handwriting was used to label seven of them. At two in the morning, with the fluorescent light buzzing overhead, I went through the labels until I located the one that said WORK – DOCUMENTS. I took it out and opened it on the unit's floor.
Papers. files. Years of diligent documentation. At first, I quickly skimmed them, searching for anything that sounded more like a business than a personal account, or that had the name Kane or Kane Global.
The third folder from the back is where I discovered it.
One piece of paper. written by hand. My father's handwriting is small, tidy, and instantly identifiable. a list of dates, account numbers, and names. Double-underlined at the top:
Internal fraud at Kane Global. "KEEP SEPARATE. DO NOT FILE."
And a message to himself at the bottom:
This goes straight to Alexander Kane if something were to happen to me. No one else." That's accurate.
I felt the ground move beneath everything I believed to be true as I sat on the storage unit's floor holding my father's writings.
Alexander Kane had been trusted by my father. In particular, by name. above everyone else. After carefully folding the sheet, I placed it in the pocket of my jacket. Shut the box. switched off the light. I walked home through the quiet, dark streets of Queens, got back into bed, and lay there staring at the ceiling until the sky outside my window changed from black to grey.
A driver was scheduled to arrive tomorrow. I would gather my belongings tomorrow, enter a car, go to a penthouse on Park Avenue, and enter through a door that would shut behind me
I felt the folded paper beneath my palm as I pushed my hand flat over my father's note in my pocket.
There was a reason he had left this. There was a reason he had written that name. There was always a motive behind my father's actions.
Which was it, then?
Did my father really trust Alexander Kane with his life?
Or had he been the one to put an end to it?