Chapter 4

Ivy's POV

Then Deborah shifted gears without missing a beat. Her voice went soft, as if she'd rehearsed what she was about to say.

"Ivy, your uncle raised you. The least you can do is help him out this one time. Taylor's in serious trouble, and we've got nobody else to turn to. Mr. Castillo's son, sure, he's a little slow, but he can take care of himself. You wouldn't have to wait on him hand and foot, and you'd never have to worry about money again. I'm begging you, honey. If you won't help us, the people Taylor owes are going to come after him. If something happens to him, I don't know what your uncle will do. I hate to put all this on you, but Amber, well, you know how she is. She can barely keep her own life straight. They don't want her. You aced your exams. They want a smart girl."

Robert didn't say a word through any of it. He just sat there with his eyes red and wet, looking at me like he couldn't bear to ask for help himself. Deborah pulled her chair closer and took my hand.

I knew the whole performance was staged, designed to heap every shred of the family’s troubles onto my shoulders — as if my refusal alone would be enough to tear the family apart.

There was a time when that would have broken me. I could never stand it when she held my hand and talked to me that way. I'd have been in tears before she finished asking.

"How much is Mr. Castillo paying you to sit here and beg me like this?"

I already had a rough idea.

Taylor must have dug himself into a hole deep enough to bury the whole family. In all the years I'd lived with them, I'd never once seen Deborah swallow her pride and ask anybody for anything like this.

She'd spent those years reminding me what she'd sacrificed for me. She'd told that story so many times that by now she probably believed every word of it herself.

Her smile froze, and I felt myself go cold.

The first time around, after I turned down the marriage, Robert and Deborah had kept up the pressure for a few more days. Then they seemed to let it go.

Back then, I'd believed that was the end of it.

Two days later, something in my dinner made me pass out. When I woke up, Castillo's son was already in the house.

He hadn't gotten what he'd come for, but the memory still made my stomach turn. At the hospital, Robert sat beside my bed and cried into his hands. He blamed the whole thing on the man himself. He said he'd never imagined anybody would climb in through a window.

He didn't say a word about what had been in my food. He even put on a show of threatening to hurt himself. And back then, when I looked at the uncle who'd raised me, I believed him anyway.

"One hundred thousand," Deborah said.

I looked at her steadily.

"Swear to it. If you're lying, the two of you get hit by a car the second you step outside tomorrow morning. Amber marries a man who beats her, and the only way she gets out is when he kills her. The people Taylor owes take his hands and feet. Cody spends his life in and out of prison until he winds up on death row. Every last one of you comes to a bad end, and even after you're buried, stray dogs dig up your graves."

Deborah sucked in a sharp breath. She looked furious, but for a second she looked genuinely scared, too.

Then she gave me a different number. "Six hundred thousand. Six hundred thousand dollars."

Robert shot her a hard look, then turned back to me. His voice was unsteady. "Ivy, I owe you an apology. I've let you down. That's on me."

Deborah took my questions about the money as a sign I was giving in. I knew she still thought she could get me to do whatever she wanted, no matter how old I got.

"If you agree to marry into the Castillo family, we can work everything out. Six hundred thousand, every cent of it. I swear. You save Taylor this once and I'll owe you for the rest of my life. I mean it, Ivy. You're like a daughter to me."

I let her finish, then gave a slow nod.

"I didn't know I was worth that much. All right. I'll do it. But I have conditions. I want back everything my father left me, especially the turquoise pendant. It isn't worth much money, but it belonged to my parents, and it matters to me. I want the two of you out of this house by sundown tomorrow. I keep four hundred thousand of the money. The other two hundred thousand goes toward Taylor's debt. Agree to that, and we can have the wedding in a month."

Just saying out loud that I wanted my father's things back eased some of the weight in my chest.

"Four hundred thousand?" Deborah's lip curled. "That's a lot to ask for. A girl your age with that much money is asking for trouble. You'd be better off letting your uncle hold on to it for you. You know he'd never do anything to hurt you."

She glanced sideways at Robert as she said it.

I remembered how close Taylor's creditors were to coming after him. That was the only reason they were this desperate. They'd planned to offer up Amber first, but Mr. Castillo had looked into her background and turned them down flat.

Amber was pretty enough, but her grades were a mess, and her family had paid to get her into college. Mr. Castillo wanted nothing to do with a girl who couldn't pass a class on her own.

The reason Mr. Castillo was willing to pay at all was ugly and simple. His son had a low IQ and a history of violence. Two women had already died because of him, both of them his wives.

Mr. Castillo wanted a smart girl with a spotless record. He thought that would give him a better shot at having smart grandchildren.

He had somehow decided that high test scores were the same as high intelligence.

He had a few other requirements, too. She couldn't have dated anybody before. He didn't want complications.

"Then the wedding's off. You can't drag me down the aisle at gunpoint. There are still laws. And if you somehow get me there against my will, I'll make his life miserable, and when I'm done with that, I'll kill him. We'd be legally married. Think how easy it would be for me to get close to him. Think about it, Uncle Robert. You're supposed to be making a deal here. Do you really think Mr. Castillo will let your family walk away if I kill his son?"

Robert opened his mouth, but I cut him off before he could speak.

"The second you say no to any of it, I walk. And don't waste the rest of the evening putting on a show for me."

"Don't you dare," Deborah snapped. She knew that money was the only thing standing between Taylor and whatever the people he owed had planned for him. She couldn't afford to let me walk.

I held her gaze. "Try me."

"That's enough." Robert's voice came out loud and ragged. "Ivy's doing us a favor she doesn't owe us, and you're still pushing her. That whole six hundred thousand ought to be hers. I can't put together anything decent to help her get started, and now I'm taking money that should go to her to cover our debts. I've already failed her a hundred times over. Push her one more time and I'll sign the divorce papers myself."

His face had gone dark red, and the veins in his neck stood out as he shouted.

If I hadn't come back with my memories, I might have believed him. I might have seen a man at the end of his rope, ashamed of what he was asking me to do and still trying to spare me the worst of it. He was that good at playing the part.

But I'd already seen how this ended. No matter how well he played the part this time, I wasn't going to believe him again.