Page 2 of Twisted Play

He’d saved me.

And now, I had to save him.

“Okay,” I whispered, rubbing sweaty palms on my pajama pants. “Okay. Just let me think. I’ll find the money.”

The man on the left clenched his jaw as a vein ticked on his forehead. “There aren’t a lot of ways a girl like you can earn that kind of cash quickly.”

There was only one way a girl like me could earn that kind of cash quickly, but I couldn’t let my father die.

“No,” the man with cruel eyes said. “The boss doesn’t need a whore.”

Abruptly, he let go of my father, who fell to his knees on the ground, sobbing quietly as the two men looked me over.

“You’re a student?”

I nodded.

“Studying?”

“Kinesiology. I want to be a doctor.”

“Sports medicine?”

I nodded again, terrified. He looked me over, calculating, as if he could measure my worth with a mere glance, then slid his phone out of his pocket.

“What’s your phone number?”

Barely able to breathe over my panic, I rushed out the numbers. A second later, my phone chimed in my pocket.

“Meet me at the coordinates I sent you tomorrow morning at eight.”

“I have work?—”

“Do I look like I give a fuck?”

No. He didn’t. He was extending me mercy, and I had to seize it. “Tomorrow, eight,” I whispered.

The other man kicked my father in the ribs one last time. “Do I need to tell you what the consequences of fucking this up are?”

I shook my head, desperately trying to communicate myhonesty, my trustworthiness, that I would not fuck this up. I couldn’t, not after everything my father had sacrificed.

“Good.”

The slam of the door echoed in the silence of the night, leaving me and my father alone in our house.

“Dad?”

“Eva,” he murmured from the floor where he quietly sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”

I blinked hard, willing the tears away from my eyes. “No, it’s not your fault,” I whispered. It wasmine. I knelt beside him, checking his injuries with clinical detachment, even as my hands shook.

“It’ll be okay,” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “I’ll fix this. I’ll fix everything.”

I had to.

What didone wear to beg a billionaire to forgive a million-dollar debt?

I stood outside the gates of the suburban estate, mentally rehearsing for the encounter, as if finding the right words could salvage this disaster. I smoothed my hands over my cheap navy suit—too snug around the ass and too tight to button the jacket over the chest, but my usual summer uniform of denim shorts and a t-shirt wouldn’t do. Everything about my appearance had to be perfect today.