Your payment is late again. I need my money now.

I stare at Marcus’ text blazing across my phone’s screen, defeat and dread sagging my shoulders. That hollow fear I’ve endured for the last month grips my heart with razor-sharp talons.

My life has officially gone down the toilet.

It’s time to accept it the way a dying man takes his last breath and know there’s no coming back.

No tomorrow.

No future.

No more.

I press my forehead against the cool metal door of my locker, my eyes still glued to the message on the phone.

The break room hums with the low whir of an ancient fridge and the scent of burnt espresso clinging to the air like a bad omen.

I’m supposed to be clocking back in from my break, but I can’t.

Not yet.

I can’t go back on the floor and serve another customer with a fake smile pasted on my face, pretending everything is fine.

Damn it. I shouldn’t even be here. I’m not a waitress. I’m a high school teacher. I have a respectable career with prospects, but I was forced to take this job to pay a loan that isn’t even mine.

So much for being a good friend.

This is where it got me—a life of constant fear.

I’m twenty-five. But the intense worry and stress have made me feel like a hundred lifetimes have passed.

That’s the second message Marcus has sent me today, and it’s barely nine in the morning.

He blew up my phone all day yesterday. Each time, I messaged Clara asking when she was going to pay the arrears.

I haven’t heard from her.

Nothing at all.

But why am I disappointed? I haven’t heard from her in nearly five months.

Goddamn it. She never called when I told her Marcus was sending his goons to follow me around. Why would she call back now?

The last few weeks have seen me sending her screenshots of the call logs showing calls received and missed from Marcus’ office, and his ‘I need my money now’ messages. But the girl I considered my best friend ignored me.

I squeeze the phone, my knuckles turning white. When this loan thing first came about, she promised I’d have no trouble at all. She just needed me to stand guarantor.

That’s it.

Except it wasn’t. I never knew I was signing my life away.

My life, my sanity, my safety.

Now I’m a mess. And I haven’t heard from her in five months.

At first, when she fell behind on payments—and Marcus started hounding me down to pay—Clara called to let me know she’d take care of everything.

She was full of apologies, so no way would I think I’d be standing here today in this position where I’m the one who has to pay her debt.

And on top of that, I learned she scammed me.

Scammed me big time. After she went off the radar, I found out Clara forged my signature and added more money to the loan. Taking it from eighty thousand dollars to two hundred. Even now, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how she was able to borrow that much. My guess is the loan sharks knew I’d get suckered into paying it back.

That was bad, but to add more salt to my wounds, I found out the grandmother Clara supposedly took the loan out to save had died two years ago.

She paid the initial installment and nothing more.

I’ve been paying the loan for the last six months. And I now have nothing left. All my savings are gone, and the last of the trust fund my dad left me dried up months ago because of this loan.

I’m behind on Marcus’ payment because I had to get my piece-of-shit car fixed so I could still get to my two jobs. Now I’m stuck.

A cold ache tightens behind my ribs, sweeping through me like an arctic chill.

“What am I going to do?” I whisper, my voice trembling against the hum of the fridge.

My phone screen dims, and the silence around me stretches, sharp and suffocating.

For the first time since this nightmare began, the truth settles like a stone in my stomach:

I’m in trouble.

Big, big, deep, deep, trouble.

I’ve run out of ideas.

And Marcus, the bastard he is, will punish me by adding his extortionate penalty fee to the arrears. Last time I was late—when Clara officially went MIA—he added a thousand dollars to the bill. It’s almost time to pay again. God knows what he’ll do this time.

I already owe eight grand. By next week, it will be twelve.

I hate to resort to begging, but I’ll have to call my brother. Jack is going to lose his shit when he hears what I’ve done.

Things are bad enough as it is. They’ve been bad for the last eight years. Since Dad died.

First, our family business went under, then we lost most of our inheritance paying off Dad’s creditors. Jack and I ended up with next to nothing.

I almost thought I was crawling out of the hell hole I’d landed in when I got the job at the school. Then I spoiled it all by getting mixed up with Clara.

At least if I talk to Jack, maybe he’ll help me come up with a solution. Or help me.

I don’t know.

The door swings open, and I jump, almost dropping my phone.

Beth, the supervisor, stands in the doorway glaring at me, pissed as fuck. Her toad-like face looks extra haggard when she’s mad.

“What are you doing in here?” she barks in a tone more fitting for a prison guard. “You should have been back on the floor ten minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry.” I straighten and try to gather myself.

“We’re up to our eyeballs in customers, and you’re in here resting?” She plants her hands on her hips and taps her foot like an old-school marm—pure Miss Trunchbull from Matilda.

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

“You better be,” she sneers with a face like thunder and whirls around.

When the door slams shut, the sound echoes around the room.

I drag in a breath and school my thoughts. Beth is a bitch with a chip on her shoulder and a permanent stick shoved up her ass, but she’s not wrong to be angry with me.

It’s the busiest time of the day. Blackstone Brew sits just off Wall Street. Like our neighboring coffeehouses, it’s close enough that the suits pour in nonstop, drawn by caffeine and convenience. The place is always filled with bankers barking into Bluetooth headsets, traders pounding espresso shots before the next market swing, and assistants juggling orders and deadlines like their lives depend on it. And right now, it’s chaos.

If I want to keep this job, I need to get my ass out there and smile like my life depends on it.

I drag my fingers through my hair and pull it into a tight ponytail, the once vibrant platinum strands dry and lifeless against my palms. I don’t bother to look at my face. I already know what I’d see—green eyes rimmed red, puffy and raw, the unmistakable evidence of tears. I secure the elastic and face forward, because stopping isn’t an option.

With my shoulders pushed back, I head out, and my God, it really is chaos out here.

Bodies are pressed shoulder to shoulder, voices overlap, and the line trails all the way to the door.

Tony meets my eyes as I reach the counter and slides a tray of hot drinks toward me.

“Table twenty,” he says. “Two oat milk lattes, one extra hot. Double espresso. Black Americano.”

I repeat it back, steady despite the noise, and he gives me a nod before turning back to the machine.

I grab the tray and make my way to table twenty. I’m almost there when I feel that familiar prickle of unease at the base of my neck.

My situation has undoubtedly made me more paranoid than normal, but it’s not without reason.

I’ve caught the same black SUV idling across the street from my apartment more than once; the driver—one of Marcus’ guys—never gets out. And he never looks away. He always makes it clear that he’s watching me.

I glance to my left, following the eerie sensation, and my breath stutters.

My gaze lands on the same man I saw in the SUV.

Dark eyes meet mine, and the knife scar across his face curves with his smile.

His worn leather jacket and the tattoos creeping up his neck and across his cheeks mark him as someone who doesn’t belong here, yet he’s sitting comfortably in the back corner like he’s part of the furniture.

He lifts his coffee cup with deliberate slowness and tips it in my direction.

A silent toast.

My stomach drops.

The tray tilts in my hands.

I lose my footing, my bearings, everything, and turn too fast, slamming straight into a wall of solid muscle.

The drinks on my tray surge forward, splashing over a pristine white shirt and suit jacket. Then everything smashes on the floor.

I stagger back, barely managing to right myself, while the super-tall, muscular, dark-haired man I bumped into remains perfectly still, his attention fixed solely on the coffee staining his shirt.

Droplets cling to the sharp line of his jacket. It looks like a Brioni—or something equally, obscenely expensive.

His jaw tightens, his broad shoulders going rigid as he opens his jacket. “What the fuck?”

My cheeks flare hot at the harshness in his tone. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

He looks up, furious eyes locking onto mine, and my pulse slams when recognition hits.

Not the kind of recognition everyone else in New York would know him for.

I knew him when he was my brother’s best friend.

Something in his blue gaze softens, like he recognizes me, too, but I doubt it. He barely knew I was alive back then, and it’s been years since we last saw each other. At least eight.

“Dorian Vale.” His name leaves my lips before I can stop it.

His gaze sharpens as it drags over my face. “Do I know you?”

The look that follows is cold and dismissive, yet something flickers beneath it before he shutters it away.

“It’s Elodie,” I say. “Elodie Harper. Jack’s sister.”

His expression hardens instantly as the memory slides into place.

His eyes sweep over me once more, taking in the uniform, the mess, the reality. Nothing like the girl he knew back when my family still lived in the Hamptons and I dreamed of going to England.

“Right,” he says after a beat.

Right.

That’s all he can say?

As if he and Jack weren’t friends for over twenty years.

As if he didn’t turn his back on us when we needed him most.

As if he didn’t have the power to save our business—and chose not to because of a grudge.

But God… why am I even thinking about him?

I glance back over my shoulder to where the scar-faced man sat.

He’s gone.

The knot in my stomach loosens, but only slightly. His visit was a message.

Marcus wants his money.

I turn back to Dorian, suddenly aware of the eyes on us now and the mess I’ve made on the floor. And on him.

“I’m so sorry about your shirt.” I grab some tissues from the stand beside me and reach out on instinct to wipe at the stain, but he takes them from my hand before I can touch him.

“That won’t be necessary.”

He dabs at his shirt, face still stern.

“Oh my God!” Beth’s voice slices through the coffeehouse. She storms over, shooting me a look that promises consequences before pasting on a smile for him. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Vale. She should have been watching where she was going. Please let me take care of this.”

Heat floods my face as every head nearby turns. I want to shrink in on myself, to disappear into the floor along with the shattered cups. I don’t even try to defend myself. The damage is done, and somehow, it feels like I’m the mess everyone’s staring at now.

“I don’t need assistance,” Dorian tells her, though his eyes never leave mine. “Next time, be more careful.”

His gaze drops then, skimming down my body before lifting back to my face. Heat prickles under my skin, sudden and disorienting, the same way it did years ago when I was nothing more than Jack’s little sister, watching from the sidelines, quietly falling for him from afar.

He buttons his jacket to cover the stain and walks away before either of us can say anything more.

I watch him walk away, his back already a closed door, and that’s it. Any illusion I had evaporates. I used to think of him as Dorian Gray—cold, callous, carved from something harder than the rest of us, exactly as Oscar Wilde intended. Nothing I just witnessed proves me wrong.

He treated me like I was nothing, like I didn’t exist beyond the inconvenience I caused. And maybe I can’t even blame him for that.

Jack was the one who slept with Dorian’s then girlfriend.

Dorian never forgave him. Or us. Guilty by association.

I watch him cross the café, every step measured, unhurried, like nothing just happened.

The door swings open, letting in a rush of cold air, and for one stupid second, I think he might turn around.

He doesn’t.

The door closes behind him, the sound dull and final, and something inside my chest goes still.

Whatever version of Dorian Vale I used to know belongs to another life.

The past doesn’t follow you forever.

Sometimes, it walks away and never looks back.

“Elodie!” Beth snaps. “Clean that up. Now. And get your head together before you spill anything else.”

I flinch and drop my gaze to the mess at my feet—coffee seeping into the floor, shattered cups, the evidence of a moment that never mattered to anyone but me.

Get my head together?

I wish I could.

Some content on the website is uploaded by users. If it infringes on your rights, please contact us.